ARTISTS
Ruth K Burke & Dulcee Boehm: Manifestations of Form, Function and Capacity
Manifestations of Form, Function and Capacity focuses on the ways both human and non-human bodies are presented at county and state fairs. From people to pie, fairs have hosted competitions for over 100 years in the United States to hone agricultural productivity and promote shared farming methods. Fairs are intensely social, locally idiosyncratic and include traditions worth both celebration and critique.
Boehm and Burke work alongside theoretical contexts in animal studies, materials studies, and question the often-gendered preparations and presentations of bodies at fair. In particular, the book The Fundamentals of Live Stock Judging and Selection by Robert S. Curtis is referenced in the exhibition title and listed below are influential spaces with which the artists have worked.
Both artists attend to fair culture with a sense of humor, theoretical rigor and a critical lens, from the perspective of having lived experiences in 4-H, utilizing draft power, and showing horses in the Midwestern United States. To reference the spectacular qualities of fair, the artists acutely focus on these materials and display tactics ordinary to the space of arenas, judging tables, and fairgrounds. White stalls appear within white gallery walls, a yoke sits in its own sand arena, wood shavings are corralled into tidy shapes, rosette ribbons hang in excess. The work reveals personal traditions and materials as peculiar, feminized, and flamboyant in presentation and application. Boehm and Burke are interested in the various forms of labor and participation at the fair; by visitors and competitors, humans and animals alike.
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Manifestations of Form, Function and Capacity focuses on the ways both human and non-human bodies are presented at county and state fairs. From people to pie, fairs have hosted competitions for over 100 years in the United States to hone agricultural productivity and promote shared farming methods. Fairs are intensely social, locally idiosyncratic and include traditions worth both celebration and critique.
Boehm and Burke work alongside theoretical contexts in animal studies, materials studies, and question the often-gendered preparations and presentations of bodies at fair. In particular, the book The Fundamentals of Live Stock Judging and Selection by Robert S. Curtis is referenced in the exhibition title and listed below are influential spaces with which the artists have worked.
Both artists attend to fair culture with a sense of humor, theoretical rigor and a critical lens, from the perspective of having lived experiences in 4-H, utilizing draft power, and showing horses in the Midwestern United States. To reference the spectacular qualities of fair, the artists acutely focus on these materials and display tactics ordinary to the space of arenas, judging tables, and fairgrounds. White stalls appear within white gallery walls, a yoke sits in its own sand arena, wood shavings are corralled into tidy shapes, rosette ribbons hang in excess. The work reveals personal traditions and materials as peculiar, feminized, and flamboyant in presentation and application. Boehm and Burke are interested in the various forms of labor and participation at the fair; by visitors and competitors, humans and animals alike.
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