VAGINAL DAVIS, ALEXANDRA EASTBURN, NORA JANE SLADE
Donna in Avalon July 29th - October 1st, 2017
Opening party!!!! July 29th 5pm - 8pm (in the cherry sprout park!!) Hosted by the legendary Pepper Pepper w/ musical performances from Sunfoot and Earth Babies 🌞🌍 food sculptures by Emotionalmeals
In the dedication to her recent book, Difficult Women, Roxane Gay wrote: "For difficult women everywhere, who should be celebrated for their very nature."
Using Gay’s statement as a jumping-off point, Donna in Avalon presents works by Vaginal Davis, Nora Jane Slade and Alexandra Eastburn. These three artists share a fearless, individualized approach to their practice and exemplify an ethos of pushing past prescribed modes of expression. Their work is a testament to the transformational process of shaping one’s own narrative through art. In Donna in Avalon, Davis transforms makeup into paint, Slade uses ceramic sculptures to elevate worn shoes, and Eastburn illustrates mystical narratives on six-foot-long scrolls.
Internationally revered genderqueer art and performance doyenne Vaginal Davis is an originator of the homo-core punk movement. Her concept bands (including Cholita! The Female Menudo, Black Fag, and the Afro Sisters) have made her a legend of underground music. A veteran of LA's club performance scene, she is a self-described “cultural antagonist and erotic provocateur,” and a key proponent of the performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Her monochrome portraits of female icons such as Pepi Lederer and Ingeborg Bachmann are executed in make-up, nail polish and hairspray, repurposing personal cosmetics as art pigments. Davis currently lives and works in Berlin.
As a mixed media artist, Nora Jane Slade incorporates ceramics, sculpture, painting and textiles to create a visual language that is uniquely her own. Her clothing project, Waggy Tee, appears in the Iko Iko pop-up shop at the Hammer Museum. Ms. Slade joins Donna of Avalon in conjunction with Portland-based curatorial project Conduit, where she is currently engaged in an artist residency.**
They are joined by Memphis-based artist Alexandra Eastburn, a painter and poet who lends the title of her poem “Donna in Avalon” for the name of this show. Her experimental art practice is characterized by automatic and intuitive painting, collage techniques and recycled materials. She is also a musician, and regularly tours as the synth player for the band NOTS. Her lavish paintings portray epic fantastical narratives swarming with mythic creatures.
The three artists will show past works, incorporated into an immersive exhibition that creates conversations between the works through playful and inquisitive methods of display, breaking down traditional standards for presenting art and engaging with the female voice.
**On August 5th, Conduit will host a Waggy Tee sale and a residency showcase. For more information about Nora Slade’s residency and Conduit’s programming, please visit http://ccoonndduuiitt.art/
Opening party contributors:
Pepper Pepper is a choreographer dragqueen and hostess of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Visit her at thepepperpepper.com for her diva practice.
Sunfoot is a Portland / Los Angeles 3 piece who play low volume tunes through small amps and a drum set that consists of a hand drum, cymbal, pan lids, and electronic drum pad, all three singing, playing random cheap electronic keyboards maybe, and switching of instruments probably. Good to listen to if you are interested in the sun and tired of negativity. Sun Foot is (Ron Burns [Smog, Hot Spit Dancers, Swell], Chris Johanson [the painter, The Deep Throats, Tina Age 13], and Brian Mumford [Dragging an Ox through Water, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Thicket, Jewelry Rash]).
Earth Babies is the earth-rooted but semi-galactic drum and guitar duo John Gnorski and Katie Bernstien.
