19 Mar 2010

'Precious Cargo' at UB Art Gallery, Buffalo

Precious Cargo, a group exhibition curated by Paul Lloyd Sargent, will be the second in an annual Artist in Residence program in which artists are invited to transform the gallery space over the duration of the exhibition, providing audiences an opportunity to engage the artist-at-work and witness the transformation of the gallery over time. During the two-month exhibition, Sargent will be working in the gallery on March 20, 30 & 31 and April 1, 6, 7 & 8 constructing Not To Scale, a working relief map of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway made entirely from found objects illustrating the lock system, canals, and waterways necessary for travel from the Atlantic Ocean to ports along each of the Great Lakes.

Sargent will also curate a contemporary art and design exhibition of work by artists and activists interested in issues related to 'inter/national versus regional/local transport, supply chain versus disposal chain, resource exhaustion versus sustainable culture, consumption versus reuse.' Artists include Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Thomas Comerford, Compass Group working in the MRCC, Thomas Frank, Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown, Chris Jordan, Stella Marrs, Mary Mattingly, Lize Mogel, Stephanie Rothenberg, Sam Sebren, The Waterpod™ Project, and Alex Young.

Paul Lloyd Sargent is a multidisciplinary artist, freelance video editor, and writer living between Brooklyn, Syracuse, and Wellesley Island, NY. Sargent's art and research investigates the history and impact of the international shipping industry on the ecologies, economies, and communities along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River through a contemporary amalgam of new media art, radical cartography, grass roots activism, and sustainable culture as art practice. He received his MFA in video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. His video, photographic, and installation works have been presented internationally at such venues as ConFlux2009 and Proteus Gowanus in New York; Para/Site Art Space and the Microwave Media Festival in Hong Kong; Gallery M in Berlin; BaseKamp in Philadelphia; Big Orbit and the University at Buffalo Art Gallery in Buffalo; Impakt Festival in Utrecht; Invideo Festival in Milan; OneTake Film Festival in Zagreb; FLEXFest in Gainsville; and Mess Hall, 7/3 Split, Dogmatic, Video Mundi, Onion City, CUFF, Hyde Park Art Center, and Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Coinciding with the exhibition will be a number of public programs. Lectures on the Great Lakes waterways and invasive species; workshops about seed saving, worm composting, and geography lessons; and a film screening and time warp performance at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center. Please check the UB Art Gallery website for more details.