Valerie Hegarty: Secrets of the Sea
May 25 – September 1, 2019
This exhibition features three artworks by contemporary artist, Valerie Hegarty, that were recently acquired by the Cahoon Museum, paired with a historic painting by nineteenth century artist, William Bradford. This grouping highlights how American artists have chosen to represent the environment and what it reflects about philosophies and thinking of their time.
Valerie Hegarty is part of a growing movement of artists whose artwork addresses the human role in environmental transformation; these artists reflect the emergence of contemporary ecological ethics and activism in art practice. Hegarty’s body of work explores the legacy of nineteenth century landscape paintings, including maritime images and seascapes, and she is interested in reinterpreting earlier colonial beliefs about manifest destiny and human dominion over nature.
Hegarty appropriates iconic paintings and images from American history and alters them in a way that creates new content. In Bradford’s Iceberg, Hegarty’s ceramic piece references Bradford’s nineteenth century painting, Sunset in the Artic. She chose to respond to Bradford’s painting in the medium of ceramics because it allowed her the ability to manipulate the material and form. Where Bradford portrays the iceberg as solid, massive, and seemingly indestructible, Hegarty shows nature as non-static, in flux, and fragile.
Her iceberg is half the size of Bradford’s and appears to be melting off the frame, adding an environmental commentary about global warming. Oceans -which cover over seventy percent of the Earth’s surface- absorb a significant amount of the solar energy that reaches the planet. One of the most serious affects of global warming is that it causes icebergs and sea ice to melt into the sea, resulting in sea level rise.
By crumpling the ceramic version of the painting, the artist refers to failure, as an artist would crumple up an image that didn’t work and throw it away. Hegarty explains, “the rendering of the image and crumpling in ceramic concretizes the moment of recognition of failure and alludes to repressed histories of clipper ships and colonialism.” She adds, “the wavy undulations of the ceramic form also make the images of the ship appear to be underwater with its distortions.”
Cahoon Contemporaries proudly supported by:
Bilezikian Family Foundation, Inc. &.
