June 20, 2014, Friday - Opening Reception for Americana at The Soap Factory

Time: 7:00pm - 11:00pm

Location: The Soap Factory, 514 2nd St SE

The Soap Factory presents Americana, a group exhibition featuring the work of 9 emerging artists from across North America. Selected from The Soap Factory’s annual open call for submissions by curator and Executive Director Ben Heywood, Americana features drawing, sculpture, video and installation work.

Participating artists: Shana Berger & Nathan Purath, Patrick Gantert, Leif Huron, Steven Lang, Ellen Mueller, Mark Pease, Kenneth Steinbach, Tetsuya Yamada

All the work proposed for this show approaches ways of understanding 'America' and the 'American Experience' - perhaps even my own personal experience as an immigrant - through work that directly examines the political aspects of various forms of American society, work that mirrors the transformation of culture through the lens of 'America', or more open poetic re-orgnisations of 'American' tropes. The Soap Factory itself, a 130 year old relic of the conquest, subjugation and industrialization of a continent, is an artifact of the nostalgia, evoked by ‘Americana’, so it is entirely appropriate that its decayed architecture be a setting, a container, for such ideas.