Experimental Personalities: Kate Gilmore and Angie Reed

Kate Gilmore and Angie Reed

November 17, 2006 - January 21, 2007

Experimental Personalities: Kate Gilmore and Angie Reed is curated by Clare Norwood and Maiza Hixson, Contemporary Arts Center.

This two-person exhibition features video and performance work that investigates the notion of the self. Angie Reed's punk-cabaret shows and Kate Gilmore's dramatizations push the limits of the individual through humor and absurdity.

As an electro-folk musician, Reed both appropriates and invents atypical histories and inserts these into contemporary first-person narratives. In "Bend the Truth in the Confession Booth," she sings of the exploits of Sister Louise, excommunicated for getting caught under the cloak of another nun. "Dancing Tarantella to a Machine Gun" finds the artist recounting a mobster ballad as a young Mafioso. Exploring metaphorical time and mind travel, Reed traverses a variety of musical genres while slipping in and out of characters.

In Kate Gilmore's video, we find the artist dressed to the nines, tripping and collapsing while trying to extract her stilettos from the perforated cardboard floor. Placing herself in fictional scenarios, she creates videos that document her struggle to escape precarious situations. The viewer is rendered helpless through all of her video works; we cringe as she swings a sledgehammer to free her leg from a bucket of cement but also laugh at the absurdity. Though discomforting, Gilmore offers a comedic and humorous approach to examine the stereotypes we project upon one another and ourselves. Both artists investigate fixed meanings of identity, suggesting video and performance as spaces to explore new personas.

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PHOTO CREDIT
LEFT: Kate Gilmore, Double Dutch, Film Still, 2005; RIGHT: Angie Reed, 2005-2006, XYZ FREQUENCY, Music video animation stills, Courtesy of the artist