Transformer Display for Community Fundraising: Version 2
project by Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros
Opens Friday, July 29 with a reception from 6-9pm
On view through September 10, 2011
at Outpost HQ
Image: Transformer 2, (detail) Market Makeover, sculptural installation, 2011
GET FRESH IN THE STREETS - Saturday, September 10, 6:30pm - 9pm
Where Healthy Food & Haute Couture meet.
(Let us know on
facebook that you will be joining us.)
Outpost for Contemporary Art in Highland Park is pleased to present "Get Fresh in the Streets", an art performance/fashion show in conjunction with the closing of the exhibition "Transformer Display for Community Fundraising" by Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros.
This artwork in the public realm, a collaboration with students from East LA Renaissance Academy at Esteban E. Torres High School, Reanne Estrada and Mike Blockstein of Public Matters and artist Amy Howden-Champman, will debut in a performance in the Los Angeles streets at Avenue 50 and York Blvd in Highland Park, LA. Developed during a series of summer workshops, this new crop of Vegetable and Fruit Couture created by Howden-Chapman with the students, is designed to promote the *East LA FreshMarket Project's efforts to "green the food desert" through Market Makeovers, a community-driven process that transforms local corner stores to offer fresh produce and healthier inventory to customers with limited access. This dialogue is a significant opportunity for civic engagement and community building to benefit the community at large.
Sweet Beats LA will be joining us for this event.
*The East LA FreshMarket Project is a program of the UCLA-USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD)
Come and celebrate with us and bring non-perishable food items to donate to our local food bank.
In-conjunction with "Transformer" Koumoundouros and Bowers have invited political activist Carlos Montes & artist/activist Amitis Motevalli to discuss their experiences on being raided by the FBI, activism, art and how we can be activists as well. For more information and to RSVP go to our facebook page
HERE.
This version of the Transformer Display for Community Fundraising features the following organizations from the Northeast region of Los Angeles County: Carlos Montes Defense Fund, Culebra Art Park, Los Angeles Food Bank, Market Makeovers, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, and The Urbanwild Network.
BRING YOUR SPARE CHANGE AND NON-PERISHABLE FOOD ITEMS TO DONATE AT THE OPENING FOR THESE ORGANIZATIONS.
Also, Andrea Bowers will raffle a drawing at the opening. Raffle tickets are $1 each and all proceeds go to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.
Artists Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros, in collaboration with Outpost for Contemporary Art announce the temporary installation of a politically engaged project focusing on the Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Glassell Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
Transformer Display for Community Fundraising: Version 2 reflects cultural and political issues pertinent to these communities. The project is set for exhibition on July 29, 2011 through September 10.
Transformer Display for Community Fundraising is a neighborhood- specific sculpture that displays informational materials and objects that will raise funds for pertinent organizations and causes. At its core, it provides a public service; disseminating information and fundraising for featured community groups and political causes.
In sculptural terms, it is a work constructed from salvaged furniture, Habitat for Humanity hardware, gel medium, casters, and a fully operational silk-screen station that produces T-shirts and on the spot didactic materials for immediate sale. The exterior has a skin of educational information from the participating organizations. Here the conceptual and political mission of social awareness and community support is what unifies the sculptural form.
Additionally, donations to the various organizations are deposited into labeled boxes attached to the sculpture that operate under the rules of the honor system. Bowers and Koumoundouros are asking visitors to bring spare change and non-perishable food items to donate to the featured organizations, thereby activitating the sculpture. Participating organizations will receive all funds collected over the course of the exhibition. The artists' intention for this sculpture is that it move onto future sites and transform through physical alteration in order to accommodate the specific needs of the organizations involved.
Transformer Display for Community Fundraising was first installed in 2010 as part of the exhibition titled
Love in a Cemetery organized by curator Robert Sain and artist Andrea Bowers installed at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. This show was structured around a series of questions on the relationship between "cultural institutions" and "community," and exhibited work of graduate students from the Public Practice Program at the Otis College of Art & Design. There the sculpture displayed information and objects for fundraising for various Los Angeles organizations from "My Friends Place", a shelter for homeless youth, to "Homies Unidos", a gang violence prevention organization.
The sculpture’s form and surface will be recovered and reconfigured at every installment. Over time the sculpture will have accumulated information and body memory of its travels and the various activist and community efforts it has helped support.
About The Artists
Andrea Bowers received her MFA from CalArts and currently lives, works and teaches in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2003 Bowers’ work has focused primarily on direct action and non-violent civil disobedience enacted through the lives of mainly women. She presents the stories of activists to express her belief that dissent is essential to maintaining a democratic process, as well as to illustrate the importance of a political strategy that stands in opposition to violence and war.
Bowers recent solo exhibitions include The Political Landscape at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Mercy Mercy Me at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, which also traveled to the MCA Sydney, Ni Una Muerte Mas at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Your Donations Do Our Work, a two-person show with Suzanne Lacy at UCR Sweeney Riverside, CA and An Eloquent Woman at Galerie Praz-Delavallade in Paris. Recent group shows include Drawn from Photography at the Drawing Center, NY, The Last Newspaper at the New Museum, NY, The Seventh House at Project Row Houses, Houston, and Progress at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York. She was also included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and the 2008 California Biennial and has exhibited at Secession in Vienna, REDCAT, Los Angeles and Artpace, San Antonio. Bowers is a 2008 United States Artists Broad Fellow and 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant recipient.
Olga Koumoundouros, a native of New York, NY and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA.
Her practice engages ideas of labor, class and human sustenance that challenge the stability of the American Dream. She contrasts constructed works with ready-made objects to reflect an economy of living in the U.S. today where connoisseurship and the disposable occupy the same space and the monstrosity of such proximity.
Koumoundouros has presented work among other venues at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX, Open Satellite, Bellevue, WA, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff AB, Canada, Adamski Gallery, Berlin, Germany, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, CA, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY LAXART, Los Angeles, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine ARts, Houston, TX, 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, CA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Culturecentru, Bruges, Belgium, LA Louver, Venice, CA, Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, UT
She is the recipient of a Durfee Foundation grant and a Creative Capital grant and a Creative Time commission. She is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA.
For more information about Outpost, please contact Ronald Lopez, Director, Outpost for Contemporary Art, at
ronald@outpost-art.org
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1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA 90042
office (323) 982-9461
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