British Artist Peter Liversidge Opening Exhibit & Reception at The Aldrich on May 1

Peter Liversidge: Proposals for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

For his exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, his first solo museum presentation in the US, British artist Peter Liversidge wrote sixty proposals, including performances and physical artworks across a variety of mediums. Of these, twenty-four have been selected for realization and—with some help from local residents—will be presented at the Museum and in the surrounding neighborhood as part of Site Lines: Four Solo Exhibitions Engaging Place, opening on Sunday, May 1, 2016.
 
For the past decade, Liversidge’s (born 1973, Lincoln, UK) practice has begun with the creation of conceptually based proposals. Typed on an old manual typewriter—complete with typographical errors and hand annotations—these proposals describe ideas from the practical to the far-fetched. The chosen proposals, guided by the concept of connecting the interior of The Aldrich Museum with both the surrounding landscape and community, will include working with the employees of Ridgefield Hardware to write a song about the store that they will publically perform; firing a cannonball into the Museum’s wall in reference to the action during the Revolutionary War that led to a British cannonball being embedded in the wall of the Keeler Tavern, Ridgefield’s Colonial-era historical site; and the fabrication of nine shallow, circular aluminum pans whose relative sizes correspond to the nine largest lakes in Connecticut, with the pans being subsequently filled with water from the specific lakes.

Aldrich exhibitions director Richard Klein, the curator of the exhibition, explains, “Liversidge’s way of working echoes artists such as Sol LeWitt, in that his ideas are open to interpretation by others in the specific manner in which they are realized. Unlike LeWitt, however, he is anything but a formalist, engaging every conceivable approach to cultural production with an emphasis on ideas that are extremely accessible to the general public. Liversidge’s physical works are usually made of everyday materials or are created by simple, transitory actions and his performative works commonly utilize people who don’t think of themselves as performers. His work is a reminder that art can be created out of almost anything and that realizing a simple idea can result in anything but a simple outcome. Liversidge is just as interested in his proposals that are not realized, as they have their own life in each viewer’s imagination.”

Generous support for Peter Liversidge: Proposals for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has been provided by Sean Kelly Gallery.

Site Lines: Four Solo Exhibitions Engaging Place

Peter Liversidge: Proposals for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is part of Site Lines: Four Solo Exhibitions Engaging Place. This series of exhibitions will also feature David Brooks, Kim Jones, and Virginia Overton, presenting site-specific commissions, ranging from sculpture to drawing and performance-based works. The exhibitions will encompass both the monumental and the ephemeral, intersecting, interconnecting, or mirroring the Museum’s interior galleries and two-acre sculpture garden, as well as the surrounding community. The artists will utilize materials found on or indigenous to the grounds and the area, offering a response to “site” that underscores the institution’s material history and its visual condition by transforming scale and circumstance. The works will seek to “frame” the interiority of the galleries against the natural landscape while also accentuating the Museum’s unique architectural features, such as a pitched roofline, paned windows, and a room-scale camera obscura. Viewers will be able to respond to works from multiple vantage points as they move around the Museum’s galleries, grounds, and the environs. Gravel Mirror (1968), a work by the influential artist and writer Robert Smithson, incorporated gravel found on the grounds of The Aldrich, and was a significant touchstone for the development of this exhibition series.

The Artist

Liversidge has worked with a diverse range of institutions, including the Tate Gallery, London in 2008; the Centre d’art Santa Mónica, Barcelona in 2008; Bloomberg SPACE, London in 2009; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2010; the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2014; and most recently the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2015. He has also developed projects for the Europalia Festival in 2007; Edinburgh’s sculpture park, Jupiter Artland in 2009; The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2010; the Armory Art Fair in 2011; and the Tate Modern, London in 2013. In 2012, Peter Liversidge began collaborating with Low, a band from Duluth, Minnesota, which ultimately resulted in Liversidge creating a backdrop for their international tour as well as several album covers and release proposals. In 2013, the Edinburgh Art Festival commissioned Liversidge's Flags for Edinburgh, which toured to The MAC, Belfast in 2014.  Peter Liversidge lives and works in London, England.

The Reception

A free opening reception for Site Lines will be held on Sunday, May 1, from 2 to 5 pm, and will offer visitors the opportunity to meet the artists, take exhibition tours, participate in family activities, and purchase gourmet farm-to-museum boxed lunches prepared by Ridgefield’s own No. 109 Cheese & Wine. The Aldrich is located at 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT.  For more information, call 203.438.4519 or visit aldrichart.org.