One of the artists in ‘Unsettled Landscapes’ in Santa Fe is Nassau/London based Blue Curry.
Cambs, 2013.
ABOUT
“Blue Curry’s work touches on themes of exoticism, tourism, culture, and authenticity. He creates elegant sculptures and installations often at odds with the common place materials and unsophisticated techniques used to create them.
At once familiar and foreign to us, his idiosyncratic works are reminiscent of ethnographic finds, holiday souvenirs, and intuitive handicraft. His “untitled” works deny simple objectification and consumption, assigning a perplexing and fantastical quality to the everyday”.
Untitled (Lighters), 2013.
“Blue Curry works with found objects and commonplace items to create elegant sculptures and installations that challenge one’s associations with the objects in use, effectively misusing everyday objects to strip them of their socioeconomic position. They become the raw materials of his idiosyncratic cultural production. Often drawing on the exoticized image of his Caribbean birthplace, he creates precise combinations that float between the ethnographic find, the tourist souvenir, and the contemporary art form. His work considers notions of authenticity, cliché, and image.”
Future Memories 01, 2013.
Blue obtained an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and a BA (Hons) in Photography and Multimedia at the University of Westminster, London.
He was included in the Catlin Guide to the top 40 emerging UK artists in 2010 and was profiled in a two-part BBC documentary on graduate artists the same year. He has shown widely, participating in the 6th Liverpool Biennial as well as in group shows in P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, The Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Untitled, 2010.
In 2011 he had his first institutional solo show at the Nassauischer Kunstverein (NKV), Germany and he was recently selected for The Creekside Open curated by Turner Prize nominee Paul Noble at A.P.T Gallery, London.
He lives and works between London and Nassau.
Untitled, 2010.
Unsettled Landscapes
SITE Santa Fe Introduces
A new biennial exhibition series that explores contemporary art from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego
July 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Opening Festivities July 17-19
SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas is a six-year commitment to a series of linked exhibitions with a focus on contemporary art and cultural production of the Americas. The exhibitions will take place in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and will be organized by a different team of curators, from locations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Through SITElines, SITE will establish a new programming hub called SITEcenter to generate connectivity between and during the exhibitions.
SITElines signifies a radical rethinking of SITE Santa Fe’s signature biennial exhibition, originally established in 1995. It represents a collaborative structure for planning its biennials, a vision for continuity between biennials, a commitment to community and place, and a dedication to new and underrecognized perspectives. This new multidimensional approach—together with a strong geographic focus—redefines SITE’s role at the forefront of biennial exhibition making and proposes new curatorial frameworks for biennials globally.
Unsettled Landscapes will look at the urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas – from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. Through three themes – landscape, territory, and trade – this exhibition expresses the interconnections among representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.
“With Unsettled Landscapes, we build connections from Santa Fe to the rest of the Americas, we explore untold stories and perspectives, and we link between our past and our present,” said Irene Hofmann, Phillips Director and Chief Curator of SITE Santa Fe. “First Native American land, then a Spanish Kingdom, a Mexican Province, and an American Territory, all before statehood, New Mexico is a rich microcosm of the Americas. We are proud of the selection of artists participating in Unsettled Landscapes. These artists represent multiple generations and regions throughout the Western Hemisphere. Our show includes important new and existing works, 13 new commissions and several offsite installations. In addition, we have also included key works of art from previous decades that further expand the ideas of the show. Our aim was to curate a dynamic exhibition that shows how themes of landscape, territory and trade weave throughout the work of artists from every corner of the Americas.”