Opening Reception - MacDonald’s & Subritzky’s Politically-Charged “Lobby, Fold and Spin” Installations March 14, 2007

MEDIA ALERT
Pace University/University of Technology, Sydney
Global Art Collaboration
MacDonald’s & Subritzky’s Politically-Charged “Lobby, Fold and Spin” Installations Debut in New York City;

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 14 at 6 PM at Pace University with the artists and Hon. Robert Hill, Australian Ambassador to the United Nations

OVERVIEW From March 14 to May 5, two Australians, artist Fiona MacDonald and curator Ricky Subritzky, will collaborate on a series of three installations in New York City. Entitled “LOBBY, FOLD and SPIN,” the provocative installations are part of an international project that The Washington Post has called “charged” and “striking” and The Sydney Morning Herald has described as “subtle and beautiful.” The New York showing is a result of a collaboration between Pace and The University of Technology, Sydney, and the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in Chelsea.

LOBBY (March 14-May 5) – installed in the lobby of the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, America’s last Liberty Tree forms an immense mandala-like canopy circled by doves and hawks, while the surrounding space is completely wrapped with 900 yards of silk drapery depicting a kaleidoscopic crowd scene. In this installation, MacDonald and Subritzky contemplate relationships between citizens and governments, and the influential sway of lobby groups in the struggle between liberty and authority.

FOLD (March 14 - April 14) – installed at the Peter Fingestin Gallery at Pace University, MacDonald and Subritzky bring home the implications of the accumulation of property. This second installation immerses observers in intricate, insidious and repetitive patterns enfolding the heady mix of capitalism and militarism into domestic flows and architectures. In a disquieting tableau, a rocking chair and light shade merge in a wallpapered flurry of falling leaves and ascending warplanes. A drape repeats a “geophysical survey of lurid magnetic intensity data” overlaid with a crystalline motif of B-1B bombers. A grid of 50 paper shopping bags, a “bag-flag,” is silhouetted with birds of prey. And the last Liberty Tree flutters on a wall covered with US one dollar bills, and looks on a shadowy rug below.

SPIN (March 22 - April 21) – at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, a series of lamps are transformed into zoetropes; precursors to cinema, zoetropes use cylinders set in motion to animate still images. Riffing on the mendacity of political “spin,” and satirizing mass media’s problematic predilection for simplification, MacDonald & Subritzky animate imagery drawn from current affairs. As each trope spins erratically – a hand passes a buck; someone does a back flip; somebody else fans the flames; and the canopy of American’s last Liberty Tree spins in perpetuity.

LOBBY & FOLD OPENING RECEPTION – WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007, 6 - 8pm
Pace University
1 Pace Plaza (across from City Hall)
Lower Manhattan
Enter at Spruce Street (between Gold Street and Park Row)

EXHIBIT HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 PM (except during theater events at Pace, call 212-346-1715 to confirm weekly schedule).

FREE ADMISSION

ABOUT FIONA MACDONALD & RICKY SUBRITZKY: MacDonald & Subritzky first collaborated in 1995 at the Museum of Sydney, where they developed work now in public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia. More recently, they worked together in 2005 on the Strangely Familiar exhibition in Sydney (http://oj.hss.uts.edu.au/strangelyfamiliar/strangelyfamiliar), and in 2006 on the Dream Home exhibition in Washington DC (http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/dreamhome). MacDonald's visual art practice often explores entangled personal, aesthetic and historical storylines. She says she frequently uses modest materials and artisan techniques, including collage, weaving and silhouette, to create visual paradoxes that challenge essentialising narratives and imperialisms. Subritzky's academic and curatorial practice deploys what he calls a 'radical empiricism,’ bridging critical distance to engage with contemporary problems. Beyond ideology critique, he is interested in an actively experimental approach that creates new and productive associations between ideas, materials and texts.

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS, PACE UNIVERSITY: http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=6928

ABOUT PACE UNIVERSITY: One hundred years old in 2006, Pace University is known for an outcome-oriented environment that prepares students to succeed in a wide-range of professions. Pace has facilities in downtown and midtown New York City and in Westchester County at Pleasantville, Briarcliff, and White Plains (a graduate center and law school). A private metropolitan university, Pace enrolls approximately 13,500 students in undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Ivan G. Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Law School, Lienhard School of Nursing, Lubin School of Business, and School of Education. www.pace.edu
DIRECTIONS TO PACE’S DOWNTOWN CAMPUS: http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=16157

Official Website: http://www.pace.edu