RISD Museum’s Two Bright, Pop Shows

Perhaps echoing the pop thrills of its most recent UK exhibit, the RISD Museum opens two shows this month that will light up the city with modern takes on life.

Opens Friday, November 11: The New York-based artist and self-proclaimed "news junkie" recalls the fear and panic engendered by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Her allegorical narrative of 339 cartoon-like paintings re-imagine the folk fable of Chicken Little and comment on the media sensationalism infecting our current political and cultural landscape, feeding our fears, and inducing feelings of powerlessness.

 

Chunn adapts found clip art images to represent a Kafkaesque world in which danger seems to lurk around every corner. Mapped out in 2004 as a 10-year project, her 11-scene cycle----six of which will be on view at the RISD Museum----takes on such contemporary issues as environmental disasters, road rage, healthcare, poverty, and crime, and shows how coverage by print and broadcast media exacerbate our fears. Despite the seriousness of her concerns, Chunn's cultural critique is infused with a remarkable sense of humor and visual invention.

 

Chunn received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, An Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2005, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1985 and 1995.

 

Opens Friday, November 18: Cultural traces from the city of Manchester, England, are viewed through the lens of contemporary British artist and Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller in Jeremy Deller: Manchester Tracks.

Manchester Tracks  highlights the Museum's 2011 acquisition of Deller's Shaun Ryder's Family Tree (2008), exhibited along with a selection of materials drawn from the artist's projects in and about the northwestern English city. His choice to create work about Manchester is rooted in the dichotomy of its prominence and decline as "the "world's first industrial city" and its significance as the birthplace of some of the most influential British music of the late 20th century.

Deller's work investigates cultural forms and historical processes, focusing on the creative ways in which social histories are made, shared, altered, and remembered. Acting as a producer, orchestrator, curator, or director of a range of projects-including films, processions, historical reenactments, demonstrations, exhibitions, and publications-the social aspects of a project or place often become a central medium of his work.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Deller won the Turner Prize in 2004----an honor given each year to one British artist younger than 50, recognizing an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work.

RISD Museum of Art, 224 Benefit and 20 North Main St, open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am-5 pm, and 10 am-9 pm every Thursday. Free admission 5-9 pm on third Thursdays and all day the last Saturday of each month; pay-what-you-wish every Sunday, 10 am-1 pm. Closed January 1, July 4, the month of August, Thanksgiving Day, and December 25. Admission is $10 adults; $7 seniors (age 62+); $3 college students with valid ID and youths (ages 5 to 18); and free for Museum members, RISD and Brown University students and staff, and children under 5. For more information, call 454-6500 or visit risdmuseum.org.

Look for Lauren Marchetti's preview of Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear next week on GoLocalTV, here.