Athens, Ga. – The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will host the exhibition “Victory Lap: Time-Based Winners of the Kress Project” through Sept. 7 in the Alonzo and Vallye Dudley Gallery, which is devoted to new media.
This exhibition features video and audio winners and honorable mentions from the Kress Project, a two-year initiative celebrating the 50th anniversary of the museum’s Samuel H. Kress Study Collection. The exhibit includes an international juried art competition and an online exhibition of creative responses inspired by the museum’s Kress Study Collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings.
The Kress Project solicited responses to the 12 Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings in the museum’s Kress Collection from around the globe, with a total of 403 submissions coming from as far away as Turkey and Iran. Submissions included visual art in many media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, video, photography and new media such as Twitter and Facebook; works of fiction, poetry, original songs and music; recipes; dance; as well as interactive works. Participants ranged from children to the elderly and from those with great familiarity with the works of art to many who had never seen them before. There was no fee to submit a response.
Didi Dunphy, Kate Pierson and Jed Rasula served as the judges, selecting 24 winners, who will receive a $500 prize, and 26 honorable mentions. All will be published in a forthcoming multimedia book. Dunphy is a former professor in the contemporary arts in the UGA Lamar Dodd School of Art and works in the curatorial field, including organizing exhibitions at The Gallery@Hotel Indigo-Athens. Pierson is one of the founding members of The B-52’s, one of the seminal rock bands responsible for shaping the Athens music scene. She currently owns and operates Kate’s Lazy Meadow, a rustic getaway in Mount Tremper, N.Y. Rasula is the Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English at UGA. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Program at University of California, Santa Cruz, and taught at Pomona College in California and Queen’s University in Canada before coming to UGA in 2001.
“Victory Lap: Time-Based Winners of the Kress Project” includes four works of video art, a recorded song and a taped dance piece. Charlie Hartness contributed the original song with banjo accompaniment titled “The Lynching.” In describing his entry, Hartness said, “As a Southerner who grew up with stories of the Depression and the constant presence of the church, I was moved by three of the paintings in the room: ‘Christ, Man of Sorrows,’ ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Madonna and Child’.”
Mark Starling’s “The Saints, The Saints” investigates the notion of sainthood in relation to current conditions in his video made from photographs taken in New York City. Katherine Hammond and Lee Smith, a team who have worked together for more than 30 years in a variety of media, created their video submission “To the God of Your Choice” in response to Simone dei Crocefissi’s “Madonna and Child with Saints.” They describe it as “represent[ing] stories of a life of an adventurer, who believes in perhaps another God” and point out that it addresses the artist’s “outstanding attention to genre and decorative detail, innovative imagery and exaggerated facial expressions.”
Ted Kuhn, a local artist, submitted a video titled “Cross Check,” which addresses, in the artist’s words, “repetition and self-involvement.” Peter Russell’s “Prägnanz” takes its title from a concept in Gestalt philosophy that focuses on objects being seen in as simple a manner as possible. Kelly Ozust’s submission “In/En Vision” is a “work of choreography for the camera,” incorporating a length of bright pink fabric that wraps around and envelops the dancer’s body. Ozust said, “My work seeks to tell the stories of those who might otherwise not be heard. I want dance to feel inclusive…. I know that dance can simultaneously reflect, create and react to history, so by intertwining personal events, public histories and strong emotion, I attempt to create work that resonates with the past and the present.”
The Kress Project is organized by the GMOA and made possible by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. See http://www.georgiamuseum.org/kressproject for more details and to view submissions in other media.
Museum Information
Partial support for the exhibitions and programs at the Georgia Museum of Art is provided by the Georgia Council for the Arts through appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. The council is a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. Individuals, foundations and corporations provide additional museum support through their gifts to the University of Georgia Foundation. The Georgia Museum of Art is located in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex on the East Campus of the University of Georgia. The address is 90 Carlton Street, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 30602-6719. For more information, including hours, see www.georgiamuseum.org or call 706/542-GMOA (4662).
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