New work by Aurora Robson
Curated by Eileen Tognini
Opening Party: Friday, October 15, 2010, 710pm
Exhibition: October 16 - November 7
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 1:26pm
Address: Skybox at 2424 East York Street, Philadelphia PA 11215
be like water will be presented as a DesignPhiladelphia event opening on Friday, October 15 at the Skybox at 2424 Studios, a new studio building at 2424 East York Street in Fishtown. Inspired by the dramatic turn-of-the-century industrial space, Curator Eileen Tognini invited Robson to create a monumental scale installation made from thousands of recycled plastic bottles and over 108' long.
"My work is largely about transforming something negative into something positive, recognizing and exploring potential. be like water is an installation comprised of bottles and caps that would otherwise be burdensome on the environment. Instead, I have transformed them to create what I hope is suggestive of an uplifting waterfall of light and form," says Aurora Robson.
In conjunction with the show, invited schools, including Philadelphia public, charter, private and a community school have been engaged in collecting plastic bottle caps. Plastic bottle caps are especially problematic as they do not get recycled, and end up in landfills and oceans likely to be ingested by birds and fish due to their opacity and bright colors. In a joint effort to raise environmental awareness, bottle caps will be collected and sorted by students, and then displayed at the event. Robson will then deliver all of the bottle caps to Aveda, located in Babylon, NY, one of the only places in the country that recycles caps.
The use of familiar, ordinary and recycled materials, considered unconventional by classical standards of materials to create art, has long been a personal interest of Eileen's. "It's my goal to introduce an artist's work whose use of unexpected materials may expand the definition of 'what is design of art,' moreover to use design and art to show how waste by-products can be brilliantly re-imagined so materials don't end up in the waste stream."
Robson is a 2009 recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, and a 2010 recipient of an Arthur Levine Foundation Grant. She has exhibited internationally and has works in major public, corporate and private collections worldwide. Robson is in the process of forming an international alliance of like-minded artists, designers and architects called Project Vortex, creating global opportunity for artists to join forces with Project Kaisei and the Ocean Conservancy to help eliminate the plastic vortexes in our oceans.
Eileen Tognini has been organizing and curating art-centered events, gallery shows, artist salons, and sculpture gardens for the last 14 years. Her work focuses on exhibiting talents of emerging and recognized artists in the Philadelphia/New York region.
For more info, download the full press release.