Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison:
The Force Majeure
September 12- October 31, 2009
Artist Reception: September 12, 2009 6-8 p.m.
The Force Majeure
September 12- October 31, 2009
Artist Reception: September 12, 2009 6-8 p.m.
There is a gentle beauty in their work, and much charisma in the otherworldly maps and text panels that are poetic and personal rather than dryly official. The exhibition is, of course, a call to action, but is foremost a lyrical meditation on what ecological disaster and collective recovery might one day look like.
Elizabeth Mahoney, The Guardian, 2008Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison will be exhibiting a new multimedia installation titled The Force Majeure at Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art. The Force Majeure takes form as a body of photos, text, drawings, large-scale mappings, ecologically based proposals and global warming narratives. Indeed, the crisis of global warming is not a recent concern for these artists, but one they have addressed throughout an exhibition career going back to 1970. (The 1970-71 period, for example witnessed the Harrisons’ Ecosystem of the Western Salt Works at LACMA’s famous – or notorious – Art and Technology exhibition, their controversial Portable Fish Farm project at London’s Hayward Gallery and as well, a spirited debate
with artist Robert Smithson on the paradoxes of art and ecology). The Harrisons, whose proposals have influenced long-term public policy planning, are internationally recognized for their visionary artworks grounded in the natural sciences.
