The Union Art Gallery is located at 2200 East Kenwood Boulevard on the Campus level is free and open to the public. The gallery will be open for Gallery Night from 11am-9pm on Friday and 11-3pm on Saturday.
Union Art Gallery Director Andrea Skyberg has curated a smart bunch of artists in this exhibition that looks at divisions in Milwaukee. Coming from a myriad of formal and political perspectives the works seem to spark and sparkle- many works use video and invite viewer interaction.
In works like Jeremy Brown's, where any person walking into the space has their moving image projected but eerily divided by a wall that only exists as a digital construct.
Jamal Currie and Steve Wetzel's works uses antennae and video transmitters and receivers to describe an idiosyncrasy in Milwaukee's segregation: Where does Old World Third Street End and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Begin?
Marc Tasman's video work shows us in surveillance video a string of people trying to steal a John Kerry for President sign. In another video we see the haunting flames that dance as they devour a Bush/Cheney sign while the Music of a Belly Dancer's band plays the theme from Laurence of Arabia. Both videos come projected out of a four foot stack of firewood - atop the pile are the actual embattled signs from the surveillance videos.
Also highly intriguing is Nicholas Lampert's photos of North Avenue as it begins on the western outskirts and sketches all the way to Lake Michigan. Reminiscent of the work of Ed Ruscha, the photos also invoke other famous dividing walls, formerly in Berlin and now in the West Bank. This sixty foot long wall in the gallery, covered by this line of photos shows us the visual culture of the city in unique storefronts and street art.
The entire show is held together by stark panels of statistical data detailing the changes of populations of African American, Latinos, and Whites in Milwaukee.
Powerful. Not to be missed.
Additional artists include:
Jesus Ali
Jenny Plevin & Allison Westbrook
Armando Gallegos
Alisha Dallosto
Eliot White
Michael Maier
Runs through August 5. Open during summer Gallery
Night and Day on July 29th & 30th., with closing
performance on Friday, August 5th from 8-10:30 by
Lyrical Sanctuary (an open mic series that welcomes
poets, artists, and performers to express themselves
before a captive audience).
For more info see
http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/e-announcment/Untitled-1.htm
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http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/index.html
From the press release:
The Union Art Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UAG) is pleased to present the exhibition The Milwaukee Divide from July 8 th –August 5 th , 2005. This exhibition tackles the issues of segregation and separation in Milwaukee through the mediums of video installation, photography, painting and sculpture. The topics of segregation and separation are being interpreted broadly to include racial issues, as well as geographical, political, gender and economic segregation in Milwaukee.
