Press Release - "Elements Of..." Group Exhibition
Angela Hennessy
“Black Oracles”
Synthetic and human hair, artist’s hair, hair rollers and foundations, foam, wood spools, wool, athletic tape, twist ties, wire, ivory soap, gold leaf, copper sheet, plumbing parts
7’ DIA x 31”H (table)
Individual objects vary up to 30”H
2019
pt.2: Oakland
Elements Of…
Angela Hennessy
Christopher Martin
Curated by Adrian Octavius Walker
Opening reception: Saturday, March 14th, 2020 12-10 p.m.
Showing Through: Friday, April 3, 2020
1523b Webster St.
Oakland, CA 94612
info@part2gallery.com
pt. 2: Oakland is pleased to present Elements Of..., a group exhibition by Angela Hennessy and Christopher Martin, curated by Adrian Octavius Walker. The works in this show contend with universal experiences - life, death, love, belonging - mediated through Blackness; as a personal and lived experience, as a part of an ancestral lineage, and as a historical construction. Hennessy fuses European and African mourning rituals using hair. Martin subverts traditional tattoo flash images to simultaneously satirize and interrogate slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. By showing this group exhibition adjacent to his solo show, Walker demonstrates the importance of participating in a community of artists and making space for others who are also exploring the multiplicity of Blackness and the intersection of multiple identities.
Angela Hennessy
”Body for a Black Moon”
Synthetic and human hair, artist’s hair, wood, plumbing parts, foam, athletic tape, wire, hand-carved Ivory soap beads, gold leaf, copper sheet, glitter, black lava sea salt, paint.
6.5’H x 3’DIA
2019
Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based artist and Associate Professor at California College of the Arts where she teaches courses on visual and cultural narratives of death and contemporary art. Through writing, studio work, and performance her practice examines mythologies of blackness embedded in linguistic metaphors of color and cloth. Last fall her work was featured in a solo exhibition When and where I enter at Southern Exposure and in the recent publication Fray: Textile Art and Politics by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
In 2015, she survived a gunshot wound while interrupting a violent assault on the street in front of her house. Her manifesto, The School of the Dead, was written in the following months of recovery. Alternating between poem, prayer, and call to action, The School of the Dead is now in development as an educational program for aesthetic and social practices that mediate the boundary between the living and the dead.
Hennessy volunteers with hospice and works with families on home funerals, death vigils, and grief rituals. She is certified in the Grief Recovery Method and has trained with Final Passages and the International End of Life Doula Association. She serves on the advisory boards of Recompose/The Urban Death Project, and Death Salon, and works to bring practices of cultural diversity to the Death Care movement.
She leads workshops and lectures nationally. Talks and performances include IDEO’s Reimagine End of Life, Death Salon Seattle, You’re Going to Die, CTRL+SHIFT Artists Collective, Disclose Silence/We See Violence, San Francisco Art Institute, and Nook Gallery.
Her work has been exhibited at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, The Growlery, Bellevue Arts Museum, Exit Art, Southern Exposure, The Richmond Art Center, The Small Gallery, and The Oakland Museum of California. Hennessy’s work is in the permanent collection of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum and was featured in the Journal of Cloth and Culture and In The Make: Studio Visits with Artists. Angela is also a Artadia Award winner for 2019
Her article, From the Morgue to the Museum, on death and textiles in the work of Teresa Margolles was published in Surface Design Journal and was the subject of conference lectures at Death, Art, and Anatomy in England and Death:OK in Oregon. She also presented her paper, Skin Deep: Josephine Baker at the Textile Society of America Symposium in Savannah, Georgia in 2016.
Solo Exhibitions
2019 Emerging Artist Program, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA
2017 When and where I enter, Southern Exposure Gallery, SF
Selected Group Exhibitions
2019 Choreographies of Disclosure, ProArts Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 Passed By This Way, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Ashara Ekundayo Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 The Black Woman Is God, SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA
2018, Cult Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA
2018 BLACK HO(L)ES, The Growlery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Radical Beauty, Alameda Windows Project/Art Walk, Alameda, CA
2018 Object Action: F Word, State Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Selected Press, Talks etc.
2019 Sculpture Magazine article by Maria Porges
2019 Ashara Ekundayo Gallery with Lava Thomas and Dana King, moderated by Leigh Raiford.
2018 Nat Brut interview with Danielle Wright
2018 Artist Talk, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2018 Visual & Critical Studies Forum, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2018 Art Crush radio interview, KALX 90.7
2018, Artist Talk, California State University, Monterey Bay, Monterey, CA
2017 Angela Hennessy in conversation with Elena Gross, Jacqueline Francis and Leila Weefur, Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017, Interview, Cranium Corporation
Christopher Martin (b. North Carolina) is a multimedia artist exploring the African Diaspora. Driven by a desire to push southern history, Martin confronts aesthetic perceptions of contemporary injustices. Christopher Martin works in Oakland and San Francisco.
Solo Exhibitions:
2019 To Whom It May Concern, Tips On Failing Gallery, Portland, OR
2019 VooDoo By Night, Little Lodge Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Dark Was The Night, First Amendment Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Heritage & Hate, Naming Gallery, Oakland, CA
Group Exhibitions:
2020 Elements of…, pt. 2: Gallery, Oakland, CA
2020 The Moleskine Project IX, POW! WOW!, Hawaii
2019 Secret Santa, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019 Summer Friends, pt. 2: Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 Forever, A Moment: Meditations on Time and Space, SOMArts Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Love Letters From a Run Away Slave, Mise En Place Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics & Black Futures, Walter & McBean Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Juxtapozmag Clubhouse, First Amendment Pop Up Gallery, Miami, FL
2018 Reorienting The Images, SOMArts Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Rouge Objects, University College London, London, UK
2018 Spoke Art 12x12, Vertical Gallery, Chicago, IL
2018 FLUSH, Swedish American Hall, San Francisco, CA
2018 Highly Personal Deeply Social, SpaceworksNYC, Brooklyn, NY
2018 Vexillum, The Holland Project Gallery, Reno, NV
2018 For The Culture, Bayview Opera House, San Francisco, CA
2018 Sentimental Mood, First Amendment Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 The Black Infinity, No Place Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Call for Beauty, Root Division, San Francisco, CA
2017 Past, Present & Future, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Black & White, 3rd Street Village Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Past Presence, Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA
2017 Crop-Up, 3rd Street Village Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Gutter Rainbow, Laughing Monk Brewery Project Space, San Francisco
2017 Finding My Freedom, 3rd Street Village Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Eudaimonia Naturae, Roll Up Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Black Mail Show Pt.2, Space 236, San Francisco
2015 Black Mail Show, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco
Murals
2020 Postmates, San Francisco, CA
2019 Forest for the Trees, Portland, OR
2018 1 AM Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Publications
2019 KQED Documentary (online)
2019 Illetante vol. 4 (print)
2019 Allied Forces Press (print)
2017 Illetant vol. 2 (print)
2016 VEUXDO (online)
2016 Hoodline (online)
2016 Black Mail Love Zine (print)
2015 SF Weekly (online)
Residencies
2018 MoAD AIR, Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA
pt. 2: is a contemporary art gallery that opened its Oakland location in March of 2018 and its Los Angeles location in October of 2019. We feature monthly exhibitions by emerging and mid-career artists. pt. 2: Oakland is located at 1523 b Webster Street located near the 19th Street BART station and has open gallery hours Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Opening receptions at pt.2: are always free and open to the public. To receive a preview of the exhibition please contact info@part2gallery.com.