October 17th – November 28th Reception Saturday, October 23rd 6 – 9pm
The Great Highway Gallery is thrilled to present Rupturre Reduxx, a window installation and paintings by San Francisco artist Jenifer K Wofford.
Exhibition Statement October 17, 1989 at 5:04 was a moment of profound rupture in the Bay Area. The Loma Prieta earthquake that day reshaped much of the culture and landscape on a local scale during a year of upheaval on a global scale, from Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Rupturre Redux is the latest incarnation of artist Jenifer K Wofford’s keen interest in retracing what broke in 1989, and what has been rebuilt in its place. Working in an aesthetic loosely inspired by the design palette of that era, Wofford investigates a broader array of dates and sites of calamity and collapse, both public and personal. The window display presents Wofford’s 2019 video, Klub Rupturre!! in a new immersive installation. The video, taking the form of a 1989 regional TV Dance Party, shows a creepy television hostess and dancers presenting each song on a top ten countdown leading up to the moment of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Inside the gallery, Wofford presents a selection of works on paper from her ongoing Rupturre series.
About the Artist Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work investigates hybridity, history, calamity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio M.O.B. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong).
Wofford is a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her other awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has also been artist-in-residence at The Living Room (Philippines), Liguria Study Center (Italy) and KinoKino (Norway).
A well-known arts educator, Wofford is part-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco. She has also taught at UC Berkeley, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA).
Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia and the California Bay Area, Wofford has also lived in Oakland and Prague. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Artist Links instagram – @woffsilog web – wofflehouse.com
October 4th – October 22nd
Reception Friday, October 4th 6pm – 9pm
Artist’s Statement
At the water’s edge politics were once reputed to stop. Today our politics offer no foreign policy consensus and our coasts are the most desired, politically contested, and environmentally burdened regions on earth. Facing rising sea levels, depleted resources, massive storms, unsupportable population densities, and the many other ravages of global warming the very geography of the coast is under siege and addressing these issues is
the world’s most desperate international policy necessity. And yet people still travel to the coast for recreation in record numbers— often oblivious to ongoing debates about access, use, exploitation of coastal resources, and the global warming crisis itself. The coast has become a battleground, even as it remains merely a day at the beach.
The photographs included here are selections from a forty image book project that uses quotes from scientists, bureaucrats, policy statements, politicians, and ordinary citizens who have been affected by the actions of extractive industries or global warming-related events. The dialogue is dire, the lack of concerted action around the world is terrifying. As we face an existential threat to life on earth as we’ve come to know it, the vacuum of response is our species’ greatest failing. It seems likely that “We had it all and used it up.” will be our species’ epitaph. The contrast between our ecological and climatic realities and people’s time at the coast is stark, this work pushes that discordance to the limits. It is intended to be shrill, strident, even as the images themselves are beautiful. It is intended to be an alarm rung in response to the emergency we face.
But an alarm rung without response is hopeless and it seems the best answer to forcing our governments’ hands is non-violent direct action of the sort that Extinction Rebellion is practicing. The posters, flyers, and first issue of the Rebellion Recorder are another of my responses to where we have put ourselves due to our history of irresponsible, greed-driven actions. Please take the time to read the essay by Bill McKibben, Peter Kalmus’ list of facts about where we are today, and take in the rest of the paper’s print galley content. There will be a new edition available this October, look for it here in SF; the local Extinction Rebellion cell will be distributing it around town and at their actions during the latest international period of non-violent civil disobedience beginning October 7th.
About the Artist J. Matt graduated from SFAI and believes that photography is merely an excuse to pay careful attention and relay information gleaned from doing so to others. See more at tinyshocks.com.
The Ship that Found Herself We now, held in captivity, Spring to our bondage nor grieve– See now, how it is blesseder, Brothers, to give than receive! Keep trust, wherefore we were made, Paying the debt that we owe; For a clean thrust, and the shear of the blade, Will carry us where would go. – Rudyard Kipling
The Great Highway is a fine art gallery and working studio featuring contemporary works in all mediums. The gallery has a deep appreciation for images and ideas that explore where lands meet water.
J. Matt graduated from SFAI and believes that photography is merely an excuse to pay careful attention and relay information gleaned from doing so to others. See more at tinyshocks.com.
