On The Air

JJJJJerome Ellis, Kima / Lauren Kima Graycar, Lily Greenham & Andrew Walsh-Lister, Yusuf Hassan / BlackMass Publishing, Institute for the Study of the Urtext, Craig Leonard, Hanne Lippard, Glen Rubsamen & Rita McBride, Rick Myers, Aki Onda, Rujuta Rao “On the air” is a colloquialism which originated in early radio, but it’s also a precise description of how broadcasting works. Sound is transmitted on a medium, which though invisible, is nevertheless physical. The air is what we have in common, where the audible word lives, and it’s where we make public. On The Air is a show about spoken words becoming artworks, and artworks that are only fully realized when they appear in public. It draws a parallel between dictation and publication as two ways of making the inner outer—how a thing can be spoken into being, and strategies of a work’s exit from the studio and into the world. The common element in these practices is immediacy, the need to bypass more formal or planned modes of display in favor of the rawness of an idea. The spoken word is often the most accessible and instantaneous way to do this, it is literally at the tip of the tongue. Likewise, to “publish” a work requires no gallery, formal distribution network, or even a knowing audience. Instead it is a tactic to give a work life—to enable it to move outside of the constraints usually placed on artworks. The published works in this show are not books and magazines, but itinerant artworks that happen to stop here for a moment, before they continue their journey of being passed hand to hand, or worn around town, or even stepped on in the street. —Darling Green During the exhibition, a rotating presentation of artworks by gallery artists is being installed in the viewing room; creating a dialogue between the gallery's program and On The Air.