Keepsake
Curated by Sarah Irvin and John Lee Matney
Opening: July 28, 2012
Closing: September 23, 2012
Keepsake
Curated by Sarah Irvin and John Lee Matney
July 28 to September 23, 2012
Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery, Williamsburg, Virginia
Keepsake examined the preservation, alteration, and reinterpretation of personal and collective histories through contemporary art. The exhibition considered memory not as fixed record but as an active and interpretive process shaped by material culture, narrative, and time.
Bringing together five artists, Jacob Copetillo, Khate Gausman, Sarah Irvin, Wayne Devin Llywelyn, and Matthew P. Shelton, the exhibition spanned installation, photography, text based work, sculpture, sound, and performance. Across media, the artists approached memory as both inheritance and construction, probing its fragility, emotional weight, and susceptibility to transformation.
The exhibition intentionally bridged differing artistic lineages. Alongside artists trained within rigorous academic environments, Keepsake included self taught practitioners whose engagement with memory emerged from lived experience and vernacular material traditions. This intersection underscored memory as a shared yet differently mediated cultural inheritance, expanding the exhibition beyond a singular aesthetic or educational framework.
Many works involved acts of deconstruction, including the shredding and reassembling of domestic objects, the fragmentation of historical imagery, and the erasure of text into abstraction. These gestures invited reflection on how value and meaning are preserved, distorted, or reconstituted over time. The exhibition’s multi sensory format, including a live music component, further emphasized memory as embodied and experiential rather than purely archival.
Exhibiting Artists:
Jacob Copetillo, Khate Ghausman, Sarah Irvin, Wayne Devin Llywelyn, Matthew P. Shelton