3:40 minutes
In Tapitapultas (2012), Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker comment on mass consumerism and pollution by way of a game they invented. The artists used disposable spoons as catapults to shoot thousands of plastic bottle caps at a hole in a concrete platform. The platform was once part of a U. S. military installation in the Panama Canal Zone, and it is now an observation deck in a nature park. As the video comes to an end, the viewer discovers that the bottle caps that fell through the hole accumulated on the forest floor, forming a giant mountain of synthetic waste in the natural landscape.
Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, who also exhibit individually, have been making work together since 2006, often using a playful approach to address serious sociopolitical themes. Conlon has a background in science and sculpture, and Harker’s is in film and media studies. Their videos merge Conlon’s use of ordinary objects and investigations of human behavior with Harker’s irony and subversion of conventional storytelling methods. Their playful and poetic critiques of contemporary culture frequently use discarded objects to comment on consumption, accumulation, climate, and the ironic beauty of waste-ridden landscapes. Specifically, they examine contradictions in the construction of Panamanian national identity, as well as political and societal disparities between Central America and the United States.
Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...
La Sombra (The Shadow) is a video of Regina Jose Galindo performing with a moving Leopard tank...
Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...
Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...
Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters...
Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...
Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...
War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist...
A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work...
In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...
Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...
Chris Johanson’s Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat) (2010) pictures a canoe drifting toward an off-kilter horizon line, which demarcates the cobalt sea from the cerulean sky...
The Illusion of Everything (2014) follows an unseen pedestrian as he navigates the Australian city of Melbourne’s dense and intricate network of laneways...
The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China...
Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Catherine Opie in the RA Collection Gallery Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Read more Become a Friend Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Published 8 September 2023 Catherine Opie discusses her portraits of David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Isaac Julien and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, featured in our free display in the Collection Gallery...
Thomas’ lenticular text-based works require viewers to shift positions as they view them in order to fully absorb their content...