Churning Portent Exhibition in Corpus Christi

Hello! We're excited to present a new collection of work at our upcoming exhibition in Corpus Christi, Texas. Debuting at K Space Contemporary, our new show Churning Portent opens January 17th. You'll have a little over a month to check it out before the exhibit ends on February 28th. You can also see the description and dates at a glance over at Glasstire.

Here's our blurb about the show:

Churning Portent is an installation created by artist-collaborators Sarah Welch and James Beard. This Houston-based duo has worked together for over a decade producing primarily zines, comics, and printed ephemera under the imprint, Mystic Multiples. In recent years they’ve turned their attention to multisensory installations about the precarity of life on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

In Churning, the churn refers both to the water in the Gulf of Mexico during storms and the agitation and disruption of our ecological balance writ large. The theatrical-style backdrop paintings in this installation are Texas coastal landscapes and seascapes: the Queen Isabella Causeway, the offshore oil platform, Perdido, a stretch of HWY-146, and a concrete rubble seawall and pier in Seabrook, TX. Each location captures a portion of infrastructure which exists for human access above or across stretches of water: transporting the body and industry beyond the confines of land. These mammoth scale projects–which are now banal, everyday scenes–are a representation of the ego, hubris, and folly of man. This spirit is hellbent on touching every remote patch of island and taking what it will in the process– consequences be damned.

The central sculpture, titled Portent Siren is an amalgamation of the mythological mermaid. This dour creature is our “portent.” She has risen from the pelagic depths as a supernatural, folk-tale messenger warning us of devastation and seeking redress. She sits perched on a mound of concrete sidewalk and building fragments which nod to makeshift coastal erosion barriers and the inevitable entropy of all human empires.

During our install trip, James took the time to make field recordings of locations near Corpus Christi that would correlate with the works on view. The resulting soundscape includes original recordings from Goose Island State Park, Mustang Island State Park, and the Intracoastal Turnaround. The last location is a highway u-turn built at each end of the causeway connecting mainland Corpus Christi to Padre Island. A collection of businesses, boat ramps, and fisherman truck parking fills this under the causeway location, and the echos from traffic traveling the causeway are amplified by the tall concrete pillars that support the road. It might not be a cathedral, but it certainly is awe inspiring. You may listen to the installation's recording below:

 

Finally, we also made a small zine for the installation! 

benthos is a small photo zine + poetry prose zine on those that live on the bottom. The title refers to Benthos / Benthic communities, which are simply the creatures that live on the bottom of the ocean.

Written by James Beard, each zine features a combination of found and created photographs relating to the Gulf Coast, specifically the environs around Corpus Christi, Texas. The written component is an prose declaration from an unknown narrator (try to guess who it is) speaking to humanity on a day of reckoning, and draws from the history of environmental trespass in the Gulf of Mexico.

Each zine is approximately 5.25 inches wide by 4.125 inches tall. Risograph printed on a GR3750.

Thanks for reading this far! Here are our artist bios for the event as well; we hope you have a chance to check out the show, and if not then sign up for our newsletter for info on future exhibits.

About the artists:

Sarah Welch is a Houston-based artist making work about the intersections between the built environment and nature. She is currently fixated on adversarial narratives betwixt humankind, plants, insects, and animals. Much of her work speculates on the possible futures of our US Gulf Coast region. She has participated in artist residency and study programs at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and MacDowell. Welch has exhibited throughout the US, including exhibitions at Lawndale Art Center (Houston), Galveston Art Center, Antenna (New Orleans), and Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University (Tallahassee). She is a recipient of grants and support from The Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award (Dallas Museum of Art), The Houston Arts Alliance, and The Idea Fund (The Andy Warhol Foundation). Welch’s work is included in the City of Houston art collection on display at IAH Airport.

James Beard is the founder and master printer of Mystic Multiples, a letterpress and risograph imprint located in Houston, Texas. He has over seventeen years of experience in commercial and fine art printmaking, specializing in short run artist editions. He has participated in the artist residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and is a frequent collaborator with his creative partner, Sarah Welch. His current work experiments in ceramics and soundscapes for the duo’s installations.