Random Happening
Built on Water Excavates Layered Strata of Memory, Place, and Visionary Futures at AGCC June 27
Angels Gate Cultural Center or AGCC announces a new contemporary exhibition: Built on Water, opening June 27. Built on Water maps the human forces that have shaped — and continue to reshape — the economy and ecology of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The group exhibition opens with a free public reception at AGCC.
Built on Water is a contemporary art exhibition presenting past, present, and future visions of the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, featuring Los Angeles-based artists Flora Kao, Kaya & Blank, Jennifer Gunlock, Hilary Norcliffe, and Katie E. Stubblefield. Built on Water is curated by AGCC’s director of exhibitions, Cecelia Caro.
Angels Gate Cultural Center is a resonant vantage point from which to examine the ports’ industrial present and layered histories beneath. Monumental stacks of containers, towering cranes, and endless lines of cargo ships compress a dense network of global commerce into an abstract grid of steel, color, and mechanized movement. The region’s layered story holds present-day parallels: the forced internment of Japanese Americans from the Terminal Island fishing village also echoes the erasure of the original Gabrieleño Tongva peoples. The ports are machines for transpacific exchange, yet their industrial reach has permanently altered the ecology of the natural coastline and the marine life once sustained. Built on Water examines the ports’ layered industrial landscape in order to postulate a visionary future — where memories surface, nature reclaims, and humanity progresses in harmony with the natural world.
Flora Kao’s work in Built on Water excavates layered histories beneath the port, exploring meaning through place and memory. Kao’s evocative installation of cyanotype and rubbing, 100 Views of Fish Harbor, Terminal Island, investigates the historic significance of San Pedro for Southern California’s Japanese-American community.
Artist duo Kaya & Blank focus on the intersections between infrastructure, ecology, and systems of power. In their body of work, Intermodal, the monumental scale of port operations loop and distort global commerce into an abstract environment of steel and color, underscoring the enmeshed relationship we have to global exchange.
Looking forward to a visionary future, Future Port is a collaboration between Jennifer Gunlock, Katie Stubblefield, and Hilary Norcliffe, who create an immersive installation that imagines a reclaimed coastal marine environment. Katie Stubblefield’s ocean floor landscape is made up of second hand wedding dresses and pearl producing mollusks — Mother Nature creates a hybrid filtration system that regenerates despite environmental upheaval. The installation is juxtaposed with overlaid video collage by Jennifer Gunlock. Jennifer Gunlock’s projected video works convey the collision between the coastline and built infrastructure. Fragments of human detritus freely flow through the frame of crashing tides, emphasizing the present-day inseparable relationship between our natural environment and man-made intrusions. Hilary Norcliffe’s Alpha Frequency installation envisions a radically optimistic future of ocean-attuned shipping and port systems. Norcliffe’s shimmering fish-like forms channel the alpha frequency — the brain’s state of calm, grounded consciousness. Together, these works imagine the conditions under which regeneration is possible and global exchange operates in harmony with the natural world.
Built on Water will be on view in the gallery June 27 through Aug.15, with free public visiting hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Time: 2 to 4 p.m., June 27
Cost: Free
Details: RSVP, builtonwater.eventbrite.com
Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S Gaffey St, San Pedro