Vanessa Renwick
In conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and made possible by a JSMA Academic Support Grant, Cinema Pacific is pleased to present two video installations by Portland-based artist Vanessa Renwick. Renwick’s installations address serious issues, related to our environment, in often humorous ways. Hunting Requires Optimism, on view in the JSMA Artist Project Space, includes ten refrigerators with surprising contents, contrasting the challenges wolves face in finding food with those of humans seeking sustenance. In Medusa Smack, an immersive video installation in 240A (off the Barker Gallery), viewers lie on soft pillows beneath a large jellyfish-shaped screen on which images of Pacific sea nettles and moon jellyfish in an aquarium are projected. The piece has a score composed and performed by Tara Jane ONeil that includes sounds recorded by the artist Harry Bertoia on his Sonambient sound sculptures.
On April 26 during Cinema Pacific, Renwick will present a special performance of her spectacular three-screen film of wolves in the wild, Hope and Prey, at the JSMA with live accompaniment by musician Daniel Menche.
Vanessa Renwick is founder and janitor of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass, living in Portland, Oregon. Renwick’s installations have been displayed at the Centre Pompidou, the Tacoma Art Museum, PDX Contemporary Art, and the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, and her films have screened internationally. Working in experimental and poetic documentary forms, her iconoclastic work reflects an interest in place, relationships between bodies and landscapes, and all sorts of borders. She is a naturalist, born, not made: a true barefoot, cinematic rabble-rouser.
Vanessa Renwick: Hunting Requires Optimism & Medusa Smack
April 25, 2014 to June 29, 2014 in the UO Schnitzer Museum
Opening Reception/Fringe Festival Party is on April 25 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Hope and Prey: Live Music and Film Performance
April 26 at 8:00 p.m. in the UO Schnitzer Museum
Forum: Art for Endangered Species
April 27 at 2:00 p.m. in the UO Schnitzer Museum
Deke Weaver
Performance artist Dek
e Weaver
will present his multimedia
performance of Wolf at the JSMA on April 26. Wolf is the third chapter in Weaver’s life-long endeavor, The Unreliable Bestiary, an ark of stories about animals, our relationships with them, and the worlds they inhabit. On stage in the Schnitzer Museum, Weaver will perform his animal tales, with video accompaniment. According to Dennis Weaver of SF Weekly, “Weaver’s writing intrigues, while his conspiratorial, cool-to-manic stage presence trips nuggets of off-kilter humor like a tap-dance through landmines.”
Deke Weaver is a writer, performer, theater artist and filmmaker. He is renowned for his for interdisciplinary works that combine elements of theater, video and graphic art into inexorably unique works of art. Early in his career, Weaver served as the Senior Animator for the broadcast design group at the Showtime network. His latest work, Wolf is the third installment in what Weaver calls his ‘life-long project’, the Unreliable Bestiary. The project focuses on the fragility of the symbiotic relation between man and animal.
Cosponsors: Oregon Humanities Center, Department of Theatre Arts, and Department of Philosophy.
April 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the UO Schnitzer Museum
Forum: Art for Endangered Species
April 27 at 2:00 p.m. in the UO Schnitzer Museum
Cosponsored with the Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities and the UO Department of Philosophy.
