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Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc.

Montserrat Gallery in Beverly

By: - Jan 23, 2025

Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy
Exhibition opening January 27th at Montserrat Gallery

January 27 – March 5, 2025
Reception + Performance: January 28, 6-8 pm.
Various related events to follow
 
BEVERLY -- Montserrat College of Art Gallery will present Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land,Inc., FLAGrancy, Jan. 27 – March 5, 2025, at 23 Essex Street. The exhibition features the artist'scompelling uses of the American flag – as subject and material – drawing on the Provincetown-based artist’s decades-long critique of patriotism, democracy and corporatism. A public reception and performance by the artist will be held on Jan. 28 from 6-8 pm. It is free and open to the public.

Drawing on his research and work about American symbolism, mythology, history, settler occupation, Native Nations and ecological concerns, Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy confronts our torrid and complicated history of what it means to be an American and how control of and access to the Land defines our personal and cultural identities. The project moves beyond “farm to table” to “Land to Land” - challenging the corporate supply chain to return to the Land, uncontaminated, from what’s taken. The artist’s project critiques poet Robert Frost’s unabashedly Colonialist poem The Gift Outright: “The land was ours before we were the land’s.”

The installation will highlight Critchley’s ongoing series of modified and fabricated American flags, recent editions fashioned with embroidered and appliqued iconic corporate logos of the legacy of the Standard Oil Company (1882-1911). This Rockefeller monopoly was broken up by muckraker Ida Tarbell in 1911, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, for violating “restraint of trade” under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy is a continuation of Critchley’s long-term project examining the materiality of place, employing sand, peat, fish skins, feathers, water, motor oil, Christmas trees and gathered plastic tampon applicators washed up and gathered on beaches. The Land and ocean he navigates are his pallet.

Since the early 1980s, Critchley has created corporate entities that provide visible platforms for confronting the unrivaled influence and control of corporations on the ecology of the democratic process and the Land. His TEDx Talk: “Portrait of the Artist as a corporation” proposes that since corporations have the rights of individuals, why can’t individuals have the rights of corporations, such as bankruptcy protection and tax write-offs?

“We must recognize the Rights of Nature and Tribal Sovereignty, to listen to the Land and let the Land speak, in all its disparate elements, the cacophony of our relative’s voices from the microbes to the insects to the four-legged and two legged creatures,” states the artist.
“It is patriotic to honor, celebrate and tend to the Land, but whose Land” he added. An exhibition of this singular, multidisciplinary artist’s work, which employs sculpture, installation, film, performance, corporate personas, architecture, writing and activism, will be accompanied by several public programs planned during the exhibition.


Related Exhibition Events:
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 28, 6-8pm, Montserrat Gallery
Artists Conversation -Jay Critchley and Ari Montford: Wednesday, January 29 th , 11-12pm, Room 101, 23 Essex Street
Screening: The Film work of Jay Critchley: Wednesday, February 12, 6:00pm, Room 101, 23 Essex Street


Please check the gallery website https://www.montserrat.edu/galleries for updated event information.