Artist Vadis Turner’s First Monographic Museum Exhibition
“Vadis Turner: Tempest” — May 26–September 10, 2017
The Frist Center is proud to present Nashville-born artist Vadis Turner’s first monographic museum exhibition, Vadis Turner: Tempest, on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from May 26 through September 10, 2017. Turner’s practice revolves around transforming everyday materials—typically those associated with women and their work, such as ribbons and bedding—into bold, textured assemblages that assert value on female experiences, especially rites of passage, and question traditional gender roles. Tempest will be presented alongside State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, a large survey of contemporary art on view in the Ingram Gallery.
Turner returned to the Nashville area in 2014 after living in Boston and New York for many years. Although trained as a painter, shortly after graduate school she began to create mixed-media sculptures from objects related to femaleness, such as lingerie made of wax paper and a wedding cake made of tampons, in a vein similar to that of the first feminist artists in the 1960s. She shifted to using discarded textiles for wall-based “paintings” after a residency at Materials for the Arts.
“Turner is partly inspired by the history of women’s creative production, which was once largely through the clothes they made, the food they prepared, and even the hair they fixed,” says Frist Center Curator Katie Delmez. “Today, as more women work outside the home, and with the proliferation of inexpensive clothing and pre-prepared food, many modern women lack the skills or opportunities to make objects by hand. Turner strives to bring visibility to the often overlooked or unappreciated handiwork of women in the past, while simultaneously pushing this legacy forward through her artistic constructs.”
For more details, please see the attached press release or read it online.
