Sharon Lockhart : NO
June 19 - August 14, 2004
Sharon Lockhart. NO, 2003 (still frame). Courtesy the artist, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles. 16mm color film. Running time: 34 minutes. Dimensions variable.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present this 2003 film by Sharon Lockhart. NO displays the work of a Japanese husband and wife farmer. The static, unchanging frame of Lockhart's camera captures the meticulous and methodical execution of a mundane daily activity. The farmers pile hay, working from background to foreground, then slowly move backwards spreading the hay across the otherwise empty field. What Lockhart has captured on film resembles the construction of a landscape painting in real, linear time. Lockhart suggests a comparison between these farmers' work and the practice of NO-no Ikebana, a radical form of Ikebana flower arranging.
With the same deliberate choreography of her previous films, Lockhart uses the lighting, colors of the landscape, actions of the farmers, and camera angle to investigate the underlying principles and relationships of photography and cinematography.
Sharon Lockhart, an Artist-in-Residence at the FWM, is internationally recognized for her photographic and cinematic work that address the nature of filmmaking and cinematography in relation to cultures foreign to her. Traveling with an anthropologist in Brazil in 2000, Lockhart photographed the empty homes, and collections of belongings of interviewed families along the Aripuana River Region. There she also made Teatro Amazonas, a film featuring the diversity of area residents in their region's grand, 19th century opera house. Other films have tackled subject matter ranging from Japanese high school girl's basketball practice, to a Mexican laborer repairing the floor of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
Sharon Lockhart was born in 1964 and lives and works in Los Angeles. Selected one-person exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2001); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Zurich, and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2000); Pitti Imagine Discovery, Florence (1999). Lockhart's films have been included in the New York Film Festival; Telluride International Experimental Cinema Exposition, Denver; Vienna International Film Festival; International Film Festival, Berlin; and the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum presents Sharon Lockhart in conjunction with The Big Nothing, a citywide exhibition initiated by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only contemporary art museum in the United States devoted to creating new work in fabric and other materials in collaboration with emerging and established artists from around the world. Founded in 1977, The Fabric Workshop and Museum has developed from an ambitious experiment to a renowned institution with a widely recognized residency program, an extensive collection of work by resident artists, in-house and touring exhibitions, and comprehensive educational programming that includes lectures, tours, in-school presentations, and student apprenticeships.
All FWM exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.
Hours: Mon. - Fri. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat., 12 noon to 4 p.m.
The exhibition program of The Fabric Workshop and Museum is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, LLWW Foundation, Arcadia Foundation, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Independence Foundation, The Claneil Foundation, the Miller-Plummer Foundation, The Barra Foundation, and the Board of Directors and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
For more information, please contact Meg Baird at
215.568.1111,
pr@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org. For general information, call
215.568.1111.
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