South Side
Sculpture, Photographs, and Video
Tracey Snelling

April 8th - May 14th, 2005

In Tracey Snelling’s artwork, neglected sites and stories become the focus of her attention. Weeds growing in the concrete cracks and an old piece of trash are treated not as things to avoid, but rather as details to explore. Influenced by film, landscape, books, and architecture, Snelling builds structures, which reference both popular culture and history. A photograph of an actual building might inspire a sculpture, which in turn may be photographed once again. Scale continually grows and shrinks, mutating and distorting each time, as Snelling moves between the “real” and the “fantastical.” And buildings take on psychological weight – enhanced by Snelling’s use of sound and video – as interiorities, and dramatic settings. In South Side, Snelling examines the hope and hopelessness, which define life on the “wrong side of the tracks.” Among other work, the show includes sculptures of a tenement apartment building, a mini-mart, and a revival tent, along with photographs of these and other sculptures taken in actual abandoned lots and other desolate settings. Like scenes from pulp novels and b-movies, these sites evoke narratives – as if asking, “what happened here?” – and give voice to a distinctly American experience of poverty, fate, hope, and frustration.

Tracey Snelling
www.thelittleartfactory.com

Photos

Press

"Fanfare", Jamie Winborne, San Francisco Observer, April, 2005
Tracey Snelling at MISSION 17, Glen Helfand, Artforum.com, April 10th, 2005
"Diorama Life," Sharon Mizota, SF Weekly, April 27th, 2005

exhibitions home | past exhibitions