Conor McGrady, one of the artists I invited to show at Gallery Aferro this month, was born and raised in Northern Ireland during the 70’s and 80’s. His large (4×8 and 4×15 foot) drawings are done from memory, and depict the neighborhoods, blocks and housing structures of his childhood. The technical skill and scale of the work is mind-blowing, leading to McGrady’s inclusion in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and I am very proud to be showing them here in Newark.
Visitors to the gallery this week have consistently assumed that the drawings depicted Newark. In some cases, a viewer has been sure that a drawing was of their block, their home: “it’s Hawthorne!” Conor and I both guessed this would happen. It speaks to the tendency, shared by almost all of us, to look for home, everywhere.
Another artist we invited to Newark for a previous show, “Glossolalia,” is a German living in New York named Christian Marc Schmidt. After some discussion with us, he researched Newark and designed a piece that cycles through the name of every street in Newark. Using two projectors, it presents two street names at a time, some of which exist as physical intersections, and some of which don’t. The piece is a sound-sensative font that deforms based on the volume of noise it is subjected to.
After a while, word spread about the piece and teenage visitors would visit the gallery with their friends to wait for the name of their street to appear on the wall, and shout at it, either in praise or to vent anger towards it.
I would very much like to bring back the piece at some point as a commissioned, permanent display for the people of the city of Newark.
One Comment
I was raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey and while I was in Seminary at Drew I was given the opportunity to travel to Norther Ireland (Belfast) and I did see many similarities in the two cities. What really grabbed my attention was the fighting between the protestant and catholic communities and how each marked their territories by painting the curb. This really reminded me of my community and how their is fueding between blood and crip gangs. Gangs in Newark mark their territory by writing their gang symbols or name on walls. So both cities looked very similar to me.