The boundaries between high art and small business, conceptualizing and everyday life, are broken in Cottage Industry, a new exhibit opening at Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum June 1.
The exhibit will feature 6 artists and artist collaboratives “that have merged art with business by creating small shops, business ventures and alternative cultural institutions,” according to a museum press release. From the looks of things, the show will mingle abstract concepts with some very down-to-earth, accessible media. For instance, the Los Angeles-based Lisa Anne Auerbach has created The Tract House, a “distribution center for more than 150,000 lifestyle tracts that explore a wide range of secular topics.” Visitors may help themselves to the tracts, written by Auerbach and many others.
The artist-run New York Reliquary Museum, located in a Brooklyn storefront, features artifacts and mementos and odd collections; this will be its first-ever traveling exhibition. Andrea Zittel’s smockshop features artists’ version of that humble work garment. The John Erickson Museum of Art, or JEMA, is the creation of artist Sean Miller, who turns travel cases into portable museum galleries. Three of these will be on display, each featuring the work of different artists: Cyriaco Lopes, Kristin Lucas and Gregory Green.
Berlin-based Christine Hill will document 10 unique businesses in Baltimore for her ongoing project The Vendor Archive. Other works by Hill on display will include her Receptionist Trunk, shown above. Another Los Angeles-based artist, Fritz Haeg, is conducting an ongoing project to replace suburban front lawns with vegetable gardens; a Baltimore lawn has already been turned into Edible Estate #6, which is being documented.
This show seems to be tapping into several cultural currents at once, including local-food campaigns, the DIY-craft movement and an emphasis on community and neighborhood. The show will run until Aug. 24.
