The Great Poor Farm Experiment
August 2, 3, 4, 2019
Sky Hopinka Exhibition
through July 20, 2020
For its 11th year, Poor Farm is hosting a solo presentation of work by Sky Hopinka as well as several returning ancillary projects. Hopinka’s exhibition will overlap with the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin July 13-16, 2020.
Sky Hopinka is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a Pechanga descendent. He was born and raised in Washington State and Southern California, and spent a number of years in Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin and first began making films. His video work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture, and the play between the known and the unknowable. He was recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019. His work has played at various festivals including ImagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival, Images, Wavelengths, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Sundance, and Projections and been part of exhibitions at LACE, Disjecta, Counterpublic, the Whitney Biennial, and the Front Triennial. He currently teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.
This exhibition will feature many of his videos from the past six years as well as a new multi-channel installation, and recent photo and text based work. A publication designed by Nate Pyper will accompany the exhibition and include contributions by Almudena Escobar López, Sky Hopinka, Michelle Grabner, John Riepenhoff, Julie Niemi among others.
Later this summer the Poor Farm is hosting a long-term research residency called Living Within the Play, exploring the contingent nature of hosting and gathering, the fleeting and the reverberating, particular to the moment of temporary, intentional assembly. Using the “artist residency,” a reliably liminal site, as a platform for inquiry and play and party - the Poor Farm becomes a “stage” or “playing field” that can collapse forms from daily life, the studio and the event to produce a living and working space that builds on the natural byproducts of this shared experience (responsiveness) towards a cumulative public occurrence (resonance). This project is coordinated by Mark Jeffrey (Chicago, IL), Kelly Kaczynski (Chicago, IL), Judith Leemann (Boston, MA), Kelly Lloyd (London, UK) and Shannon Stratton (Queens, NY).
This year’s annual Lazy River Show Me Your Rafts, Yet Another Can Float features a limited collectable koozie designed by Sarah Luther. Lazy River Radio will feature mixes by Joe Acri and Sally Nicholson and experimental river apparel designed by Kirsten Schmid. The float takes place on Saturday, August 3, 2019 launch at 1pm. Laziness and sun screen encouraged. Poor Store, operated by Sara Caron, will return to the Poor Farm.
Microlights, programmed by Ben Balcom + Jesse McLean, is a Milwaukee based cinema that platforms contemporary film and video art. They will present an outdoor screening on August 2nd. The full program will be posted to their website: micrlightscinema.com.
This year’s Summer School will be presented by Julie Niemi alongside carbon copy, an artist-run collective currently composed of Brigette Borders, Danny Bredar, Nathan Engel, Ed Oh, Daniel Salamanca, WooJin Shin, and Ke Yi (Leah) Zheng. Carbon copy’s core areas of focus include collective action, experimental spatial syntax, and the changing position of painting in the digital age.
Poor Farm is a not-for-profit project space that honors the tradition of artist-directed programs and is supported by Christine Symchych, Jim Campbell, Miriam Van de Sype, Flavius Cucu, John McKinnon, The Green Gallery, John Riepenhoff’s Beer Endowment, George Bregar and Company Brewing.
Contact:
michellegrabner [at] gmail.com
T +1 708-305-2657
