2012, McCallum Tarry: Intersections

Burchfield Penny, Buffalo, NY

"In an extraordinarily diverse and challenging body of work, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry focus on place, face, and narrative. Racism and other injustices are the mediating and complicating factors, often startling, always politically as well as aesthetically motivated in subtle and unexpected ways." Lucy R. Lippard, Writer, Activist and Curator

Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry’s art connects with community. That is its core value. Their subjects are race, identity, and injustice. As a bi-racial couple, their work is political, historic and contemporary.

Evidence of Things Not Seen paves the way to knowing where the artists are taking us.104 portraits of people arrested in 1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama are tributes to the courage of protestors demanding equal rights.

Charles Moore made iconic photographs of civil rights protests McCallum/Tarry use these images to present the compelling and emotionally necessary reality of 1964-65. Videos of the artists confront the issue of inter-marriage, illegal until 1967. Reshaping history through their understanding of community today, builds bridges, across matters of the 21st century, among them homelessness and public use of public space. Their work Endurance, a combination of photographs and video, meet head-on the reality of the homeless.

The Projection series charts race representation in popular culture. Eddie Cantor in black face and Pam Grier as Foxy Brown challenge us to understand how black America was considered in society. These works installed with Evenly Yoked, a video which presents the artists as Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara in black face, make the national personal.

This mid-career survey unites multiple series of work and is accompanied by a catalog with essays by Janet Dees, Eva Diaz, Lucy Lippard, Courtney Martin and Scott Propeack.