JANE GILMOR

Artist Statement
The electricity is still on. Yes, there must be life. But things seem to be slowly falling apart. It is difficult to know if my recent concoctions are ruins or works in progress. Juxtaposing found notes embossed on metal foil with repurposed past works, studio detritus and collected objects, all activated by video, movement, and light, I create installations and sculptures that explore dislocation and the dualities and fluidity of self and of boundary crossings: presence/absence, public/private, poverty/privilege, colonized/colonizer. In these layered worlds of chance encounters, I look for those slippages of language, materiality and visual experience through which we try to locate our shifting identities.

For the past fifty years my practice has been concerned with socio/cultural issues, chance situations, and psychological narrative. From The 1976 All-American Glamour Kitty Pageant to my 70s photo tableaux of cat-masked Isadora Duncans in ancient Greek ruins, to my thirty years of social practice in shelters and hospitals, my search is for some unspoken connection in these random collisions of objects, images, and voices.

…We cannot help but be swept away by the slapstick spirit, checked by a note of dread and caution ... Everything, and everyone (including, crucially, the artist herself) is caught in a permanent vicious cycle, a perverse closed loop of good will, bloodlust, vanity, and pure brilliant stupidity... 

Matt Freedman, (1958-2020) Brooklyn artist/critic, catalog essay, Blind, 2005

www.janegilmor.com

CV

Past Group Exhibitions: 
National Members Exhibition, 2016
Cooperative Consciousness, 2016
Wish You Were Here, 2016
Razzle Dazzle, 2016
Wish you were here, 2015
National Members Exhibition, 1995