Installations by Conceptual Land Artist Peter Hutchinson and
New Jersey Artists Robert Lach and Jedediah Morfit
To be Added to ARTLANTIC in 2013
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — Curator Lance Fung is pleased to announce that installations by artists Peter Hutchinson, Robert Lach and Jedediah Morfit will be added to the large, seven-acre ARTLANTIC: wonder site in 2013. The Hutchinson, Lach and Morfit interventions will complement the 2012 installations by Robert Barry, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, John Roloff and Kiki Smith and will include several of Peter Hutchinson’s famous “thrown rope” pieces, Robert Lach’s fiberglass bird’s nest installation and functional, cast aluminum furniture and gate by Jedediah Morfit. The new ARTLANTIC installations, which include Lach’s and Morfit’s first public art commissions, will be installed by July 2013.
ARTLANTIC Overview
ARTLANTIC is an ambitious, five-year, outdoor, public-art project curated by Lance Fung and funded by the Atlantic City Alliance (ACA) and the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) that is helping to re-imagine Atlantic City as a vibrant, dynamic, cultural destination. The new art parks are being created as outdoor art exhibitions as well as public meeting places by providing unique, green spaces to help foster social interaction.
Luckily, ARTLANTIC was relatively unscathed by Hurricane Sandy. Shortly thereafter (on November 9), the ACA hosted a preview of the site with performances by the Atlantic City Ballet and the Atlantic City Choral Ensemble, Robert Barry, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, John Roloff, Kiki Smith and Lance Fung were all in attendance.
The ARTLANTIC: wonder site with Robert Barry’s largest public art commission, the Kabakovs’ first U.S. public art commission, and the Kiki Smith sculpture and garden incorporates two open spaces framed by one 14-foot-high and one 11-foot-high earth sculptures shaped like an infinity symbol and covered in indigenous grasses and wildflowers. The exterior of the earth sculpture is intended to evoke the roller coasters, past and present, on the Steel Pier, an historic Atlantic City amusement pier, with additional inspiration for the interior of the sculptures from the undulating terraces of Indonesian rice fields.
“The Devil’s Rage,” the Kabakovs’ wooden ship installation rises from the ground evoking the sunken pirate ships lining the ocean floor off the New Jersey coast. “Atlantic City is about dreams and fantasy — about something you don’t always get but will keep trying for,” said Emilia Kabakov. “That’s what a pirate ship is: It’s an adventure, it’s a treasure.”
The Kabakovs’“The Devil’s Rage”
Opposite the Kabakov installation is “Her,” the Kiki Smith bronze sculpture of a woman embracing a doe. The sculpture is surrounded by a garden of red foliage — plants, flowers, berries and leaves — that will change with the seasons. This project has enabled Smith to realize a longtime dream of creating a red garden as a memorial to her sister Seton who died from AIDS.
Kiki Smith's“Her” and "Red Garden"
Robert Barry’s text-based installation is placed on the site surrounding the Kabakov and Smith installations. The brilliantly colored work is illuminated at night engaging in an informal dialog with the city lights and the bold signage on the Boardwalk.
Robert Barry "Text Piece"
New ARTLANTIC Art
Working with land art since the 1960s, Peter Hutchinson will do eight “thrown rope” pieces in two different locations on the ARTLANTIC: wonder site. For Hutchinson, these extraordinarily beautiful, poetic interventions are about chance and the whims of nature. On a personal level, Hutchinson says that these thrown-rope pieces function as memorials — symbolic lifelines — being cast to his brother who drowned in the North Sea at age sixteen. Hutchinson’s thrown-rope technique involves methodically throwing ropes over an expanse of land, marking the spots where the ropes land with lime and then planting flowers/hedges or placing rocks along the lines determined by the ropes. This is Hutchinson’s largest thrown-rope piece to date.
"The Flood Suite," sculptor Jedediah Morfit’s cast aluminum furniture, including chairs and a love seat, draws its inspiration from the cast iron garden furniture that was popular in the early 20th century and is still in production today. Morfit sees the furniture as a juxtaposition of the genteel and decorous forms of traditional garden furniture with chaotic and fragmented imagery that reflects our unpredictable and uneasy relationship with nature. The bas-relief backs of the chairs and love seats will incorporate miscellaneous objects such as shoes, lighters, stereos, lawn sprinklers, seagulls and fish. The choice of objects is related to Hurricane Sandy and to the general upheaval and confusion that have become familiar in the wake of the latest hurricane, flood, tornado or tsunami. Three sets of the furniture suite will be positioned along the Boardwalk end of the site. The first three chairs will be installed in early May; the first three benches in early July; and the final three chairs in August.
"Mama's In the Arbor," Morfit’s newly commissioned gate for the Pacific Avenue side of the site will incorporate a seven-foot tall aluminum figure of a woman in Victorian dress with a bas-relief skirt of leaves and small animals along with a silhouette image on the interior side of the gate. It is expected to be installed in June.
Robert Lach’s interactive, bird’s nest sculpture installation will consist of seven, 4 foot x 1 foot, cast-fiberglass nests, which reference his nest sculptures made of debris washed ashore along the Atlantic County, NJ coastline. The nests will be positioned in groups near the Kabakov ship on the Pacific Avenue side of the site and can be used for play by children or as seats for adults to enjoy the surroundings. Connecting art and nature and Lach’s continuous search for home are the issues that inform his bird’s nest installation. The nests are expected to be installed in June.
About the New ARTLANTC Artists
Peter Hutchinson, who is 83 yrs old, was born in England and has lived in the United States for 60 years. He is a champion of conceptual, land-based art with work in important collections including the Musée d’Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
www.Peterhutchinsonartist.com
Robert Lach is an interdisciplinary artist working with the mediums of sculpture, found art, assemblage, photography and installation. His work is based on the concept of home inspired by the architecture and imitation of nature. He studied at the Visual Arts Center in Summit, NJ and the International Center for Photography in New York. He received his BFA in sculpture from New Jersey City University. His photographic work is inspired by New Jersey’s industrial landscape and decay. He had a solo exhibition at the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, NJ in 2011. Lach lives in West Orange, NJ.
www.RobertFLach.com
Jedediah Morfit received his MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. From 2007-2009, Morfit was a fellow at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia. He was awarded a New Jersey Council of the Arts Fellowship for sculpture in 2009 and in 2011. In 2012, Morfit won the Dexter Jones Award for sculpture in bas-relief from the National Sculpture Society. Morfit is an Associate Professor at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, NJ. He lives in Collingswood, NJ with his wife and three children.
www.jedediahmorfit.com
About Lance Fung
Curator Lance Fung of Fung Collaboratives has a reputation for ambitious, innovative approaches to public art. He is perhaps best known for
The Snow Show, a series of exhibitions that teamed world-renowned artists with cutting-edge architects to design ephemeral, large-scale installations from ice and snow in Lapland, Finland in 2004 and then at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Following the
The Snow Show, Fung curated
Lucky Number Seven for the seventh
SITE Santa Fe International Biennial in 2008 and
Wonderland, a public art exhibition in San Francisco in 2009.
www.fungcollaboratives.org
About The Atlantic City Alliance (ACA)
The ACA is a recently established New Jersey not-for-profit corporation whose primary mission is to develop and implement a full-scale, broad-based, multi-year marketing program for Atlantic City. The ACA works in partnership with the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) to market and promote the Atlantic City Tourism District via a public/private partnership. The ACA also works with local and state government, the private sector and other organizations to further enhance the marketing program. Visit
www.doatlanticcity.com
About The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA)
Established in 1984 by the State of New Jersey, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority provides capital investment funds for economic development and community projects that respond to the changing economic and social needs of Atlantic City and the State of New Jersey. It encourages business development and permanent job creation, promotes opportunities for business expansion, and commits to facilitating a vibrant economic investment and employment environment for New Jersey. Visit
http://www.njcrda.com
Press Contacts
Dan Schwartz/Michelle DiLello
Susan Grant Lewin Associates
212/947-4557
michelle@susangrantlewin.com
