Ellie Irons News

I’m running a workshop at Trade School on Saturday! Classes are at Grand Opening, 139 Norfolk Street.

On February 25th my recent video piece Speculative Aboriculture will part of a screening put together by Studio 27 with the support of the Big Muddy Film Festival. The organizers have put together a “program of experimental films and videos that offer visions of aborted utopias and fragmented futures.”

Future Archaeology’s newest project, moc.elgooG, opens tomorrow, January 13th, as part of Sys(x)tem at Splatterpool Gallery in Williamsburg. This latest project is a bit of a departure for our group, based on the ecology of information rather than that of the physical world. It’s a situated net art experiment in subverting the power dynamics of internet search.

Opening Friday, January 13th, from 7pm – late
Splatterpool gallery in Williamsburg 138 Bayard St.
 

We had our first event at the new studio the other night. Presentations and performances touched on issues from communication in the Occupy movement to artificial intelligence in art to new engagement with the antiquated medium of film. I gave a short talk on a concept that’s been driving my studio practice recently, the advent of the Anthropocene Age:

blank space!

Ellie Irons and Dan Phiffer
Neversink Transmissions: Documentation and Ephemera
October 2-30th, 2011
Reception Sunday October 2nd, 3 pm
Old Stone House, 282 Hasbrouck Rd, Hasbrouck, NY

I’m participating in New Trails, an exhibition opening this week in Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley Park and the surrounding Chestnut Hill Neighborhood. I’m contributing a public project called Urban Soil Appreciation Initiative. I’ll be there this weekend doing some urban soil sampling and setting up a temporary field office in empty retail space along Germantown Avenue near the park.

This week Future Archaeology is taking part in two Index Festival events.

On Wednesday evening we will be participating in the Make Ready panel
August 17th 7-8pm at Harvestworks.

Then on Friday we’ll be presenting a new version of our piece Ohm at Millennium Film Workshop.
August 19th at 8pm as part of the [Mis] Adventures in Manipulation performance series. ($10)

SmackMellon, June 18 – July 31, 2011
Opening Reception June 18, 5-8 pm

A new version of my video Urban Watershed will be included in SmackMellon’s summer show Heat Island, curated by Natalie Campbell. I love the theme of the exhibition, as described by Campbell:

The city’s combination of structures, surfaces, and inhabitants creates a heat trap, also known as the “urban heat island effect.” The causes of the urban heat island, according to William Lowry’s 1967 article “The Climate of Cities,” are many: rocklike surfaces, a maze of built shapes and reflectors, contaminated air, the lack of cooling evaporation from channeled water, and the city’s own heat sources (factories, vehicles, air conditioners, people). Eschewing strict thematic divisions, the exhibition Heat Island takes these factors as a starting point for further investigation, suggesting an imaginative mode for exploring the hot city.

More about the exhibition here.
And a nice review on artslant.com
And finally, thumb’s up from L-Magazine too!

Dan Phiffer and I are in the planning stages for collaborative residency we’ll be doing in the Catskills in late July. We’ll be based in the hamlet of Claryville, right at the confluence of the East and West branches of the Neversink River. Our project proposal, along with lots of other information, is detailed on the Wildcat Fellowship blog.

Photo of Leroy's Pool, West Branch of the Neversink, by Jennifer Grimes

April 16-July 17, 2011

One of the drawings from my Migrant Study series will be on view at Proteus Gowanus as part of the exhibition Naming the Animals, opening Saturday April 16, 7-10 p.m.

NAMING THE ANIMALS
Curious Matter, April 3 to May 15, 2011
Proteus Gowanus, April 16 to July 17, 2011

Sunday, April 3, 2011
3:00 to 6:00 pm
at CURIOUS MATTER
272 Fifth Street, Jersey City, NJ
&
Saturday, April 16, 2011
7:00 to 10:00 pm
at PROTEUS GOWANUS for Paradise III
& Naming the Animals
543 Union Street, Brooklyn, NJ

View invite

March 12- May 1, 2011

http://estuarygallery.wordpress.com/

Three of my Watershed Topography drawings are on view in this group show in Beacon, NY, with a view to Fish Kill Creek, a tributary to the Hudson!

Future Archaeology’s recent installation Ohm Ω was big experiment for us, and the results were good! Project description and video documentation (by Dan) below.

Ohm Ω: An experiment in sound, drawing, and human conductivity

A graphite drawing filling the gallery wall diagrams the hexagonal, layered structure of carbon in its graphite form. This wall drawing becomes a network capable of conducting an electrical current. Out of this network emerges an evolving sound environment, and an opportunity to explore the conductivity and resistance of human touch.

Part of the Dead of Winter Works series at Splatterpool gallery.

Ohm Ω from Dan Phiffer on Vimeo.

One day only! Happening Sunday November 14th, as part of the neighborhood-wide BETA Spaces festival in Bushwick, Brooklyn. More info here

Some of my work from my summer residency is included in this exhibition, opening Thursday November 4th, from 6-9 in Portland, Oregon (Manuel Izquierdo Gallery at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, 825 NW 13th Ave). The show, as described by residency founders Amy Harwood and Ryan Pierce:

Dead Roads Make Nice Meadows will present the works of Katherine Ball, Laura Gibson, Ellie Irons, Sarah Meadows, Robyn Moore, Tara Jane Oneil, Julie Perini and Scott Schuldt. Although Signal Fire does not place an expectation of production on our artists, much of the work has origins from the time spent in the forest during the residency. Ball’s enduring cut paper wall installation was completed through hours bent over a plywood work bench. Meadows’ and Moore’s stirring photographs were captured walking through a prehistoric landscape, one with an armful of cameras to choose from and the latter scaled down to the thoughtful exposure of a Holga. Irons has mapped the genetic evolution of our local species, while Schuldt has composed a map of his tent location based on the scale of his own stride. The exhibition debuts new films by Perini, including collaboration work between she and Oneil.

Below: Allopatric Speciation (Barred, Spotted, Sparred), 2010

**Closing Party with Trust Art 7-10 pm, Friday October 14th!**

Beginning September 24th, I’ll have new installation on view as part of the exhibition Common Ground at Arts@Renaissance in Williamsburg. The show’s curator, Sarah Nelson Wright, has entrusted me with a whole room (yay!), one which used to be a shower room back when the space was still the Greenpoint Hospital’s outpatient clinic. My installation, Groundwater Permeability Network, is an investigation of Newtown Creek and its contribution to the Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer. You can expect branches, trash and dripping. Invite here, press release here, and Daily News article here! Gallery hours, through October 15th, 3-7 pm, Thursday-Sunday. Film Night 7:30 pm, Friday October 1st.

Here is a quick/rough documentation video of the piece in action:

Groundwater Permeability Network from Ellie Irons on Vimeo.