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Curatorial
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Peter Precourt: The Katrina Chronicles
The New Gallery, Jan. 19 - Feb. 12, 2021 |
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exhibition catalogue
COMING SOON! exhibition essay by: Veronica Kavass Gallery Guide
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The Katrina Chronicles is a densely narrative exhibition where artist/storyteller Peter Precourt presents a series of personal stories as a way of dealing with his experience of losing most of his possessions and artwork in the devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The Chronicles are told in a form that hovers somewhere between a graphic novel, a journal entry, a painting, a memoir and a flippant conversation. With this work, Precourt hopes to make images that openly engage the imperfection of memory, the possibility of change and the restorative power of storytelling. Since arriving at APSU, I have been interested in curating and exhibiting artists whose artwork is a direct extension of their identity and personal experiences. This exhibition is different in that it is extremely autobiographical, revealing and distinctively linear. The Katrina Chronicles is unpretentiously presented and, through Precourt’s vulnerability and humor, profoundly relatable. In Precourt’s words, “The most depressing visual feature of the Mississippi coast, after the immense destruction, was the endless amount of debris. Everything was leveled and spread across the coastal landscape: nails, drywall, toilets, tires, forks, needles … everything that was once in a house or a garage was now scattered all over the ground. Over the past six years, I have struggled to come to terms with a way to tell my experience, which is a single story amongst thousands of stories in the aftermath of Katrina. Ultimately, it made sense to me to tell The Katrina Chronicles in a form that embraces the stepchild nature of Mississippi and the leveling power of Katrina.” Precourt lives and works in Winthrop, Maine, with wife Jane and teenage children Charlotte and Will. He is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and professor of art at the University of Maine at Augusta where he coordinates the Art Department. He received his MFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2000 and later served as an affiliate artist there. In 2005-2006, he served as head of the painting department at William Carey University in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 2007, he conducted a four-part lecture series at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, concerning art since 1960.
Precourt has an active studio and social art practice. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern Maine, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Reed College, Fort Lewis College, San Jacinto College, Lincoln Memorial University, Kennesaw State University, ArtHouse Center for Contemporary Art, New York University and the University of Lisbon in Portugal. His work has been exhibited in Austin, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Gyeonggi-do, Korea; Houston; Los Angeles; New Orleans, Louisiana; Nashville; New York and Portland, Oregon. | ||
