Check out a slideshow of images from the exhibition and a video of one of Avery's performances below!

Click HERE to read a review of Avery Lawrence Is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases in Richmond's Style Weekly.

 

Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, June 22 – August 4, 2012, Filmed by Mark Strandquist and Edited by Caroline Moyer, www.1708gallery.org | ©2012

1708 Gallery is pleased to present its upcoming exhibition, Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases, on view June 22 through August 4, 2012, featuring the work of New Orleans-based artist Avery Lawrence. Please join us at the opening reception on Friday, June 22 for a performance by the artist. Lawrence will also be performing at the exhibition’s closing on Friday, August 3.

With an interdisciplinary studio practice bridging video, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance, Lawrence creates works that engage concepts of perseverance and futility through physically grueling, absurd actions. In Moving a Tree, one character fells a dying walnut tree while another painstakingly reconstructs it. In Arranging Suitcases, three characters haul different parts of a set of suitcases across train tracks and canals, finally uniting to reveal their contents. Through these surreal narratives, drawings and sculptural objects, Lawrence explores themes of affection, disorder, persistence and failure.

Avery Lawrence was born in Charlottesville and holds a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Lawrence is the founder of The Pomp, an experimental print shop and studio in Charlottesville, and has exhibited at the (E)merge Art Fair, SCOPE Miami and Heiner Contemporary in Washington, D.C. He is the recipient of the SCOPE Foundation Award and was recently named one of the “100 Under 100 Art Superstars of the South” by Oxford American magazine. Lawrence lives and works in New Orleans, LA. For more information about Lawrence, please visit his website: www.averylawrence.com.

If you would like to support this exhibition, please make a donation by clicking on the secure PayPal button below. Thank you!

1708 Gallery and Avery Lawrence would like to thank the following exhibition sponsors: Elizabeth Birdsall, Beverly Catlin, Katherine Catlin, Virginia Germino, Nancy and Christopher Habenicht, Jenna Lawrence and Dan Conway, Mike Lawrence, Winx and Fran Lawrence, Langhorne Murray, Dan and Tess Nelson, Meredith and Andy Slater, and Margaret Van Yahres.

Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases is courtesy of Heiner Contemporary in Washington, D.C., with additional support from VCU’s Department of Kinetic Imaging and Crutchfield New Media. Accomodations for the artist are generously provided by the Linden Row Inn.

1708 Gallery’s current exhibition season is generously supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Lewis & Butler Foundation, Bill and Pam Royall, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases, 1708 Gallery, 2012, photography by Kevin Murphy

Avery Lawrence Performance at 1708 Gallery from 1708 Gallery on Vimeo.

Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, June 22 – August 4, 2012, Filmed by Mark Strandquist and Edited by Caroline Moyer, www.1708gallery.org | ©2012