Opening Reception Friday, October 30, 2015 5:00-8:00 PM
Exhibition: October 30 2015-January 31, 2016
Hedreen Gallery
Good Neighbor is group exhibition-cum-art lending library that convenes the work of 28 artists and artist collectives from the northwest and beyond. The title refers to Aby Warburg’s “law of the good neighbor,” which describes an associative, subjective system of arrangement by which library items are discovered by serendipitous proximity, rather than via a proscribed cataloging system based on official categories. The artists for Good Neighbor were chosen through a similarly associative process, and as a group their artworks manifest a network of relationships—by no mean exhaustive—extending from curator Amanda Donnan and her collaborators, Dawn Cerny and Rob Rhee, to artists based in Washington, British Columbia, Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Following a public reception on October 30th, the Hedreen will function as a hub of dispersed activity, offering each of the sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and artist books included in the exhibition for temporary loan to anyone with a Seattle University identification card. Borrowers are invited to check out an object of their choosing, install it in their home for one week, and post a photograph of the work in situ to the gallery’s Instagram feed. Available pieces will remain on public view at the Hedreen alongside borrowers’ photos of absent works, which extend the exhibition into private spaces and bring domestic objects into spontaneous dialogue with art.
Good Neighbor affords the Seattle University community the opportunity to live with and care for artworks, to experience them over time and in a context of personal significance. Conversely, it asks the invited artists to consider anew the audience for their work, and assume the risk of (literally) surrendering a valued object to strangers. In this way, the project enables exchange between individuals who may otherwise never meet, and upends the typically detached display experience of the art gallery. The exhibition continues through January 2016.
Hedreen Gallery | 206-296-2244
Wed-Sat 1:30-6:00PM