staycation iv: (un)promised potential

Featuring works by Robert Jackson Harrington, Annie Miller, Liz Rodda, and Tammie Rubin, staycation iv: (un)promised potential explores concepts that generate and change through repetition, contradiction, and fictional narratives; in so doing, the works in this exhibition create space for new potentials. Annie Miller’s work considers the inability to fully realize desire and confronts cultural expectations of femininity and aging. Tammie Rubin explores the power of objects in forming identity and enacting ritual as well as their capacity to transform, allowing space for new associations to take place in her installations. Liz Rodda employs found video and imagery in her installation work, creating new contexts unintended by the original maker and finding new potentials in these materials. Robert Jackson Harrington creates drawings and sculptural installations from everyday materials that suggest a kinetic function, an ultimately false narrative that exposes our understanding of potentiality as having to “work.” In an age of failing systems, nearly one year into a global pandemic, how have we come to accept the loop of futile promises? And how does art counter these promises?

staycation iv: (un)promised potential is the fourth iteration of our Staycation series. An annual exhibition established in 2016 at MASS Gallery, Staycation features artists working in Austin who are selected based on the quality of their work, the originality of their vision, and their relevance to a theme selected by the MASS member-curators, which emerges through conversations with many local artists. The series represents a snapshot of the breadth of Austin’s artistic talent and is designed to give Austin-based artists the opportunity to show amongst their peers.

In conjunction with staycation iv: (un)promised potential, each weekend of the exhibition MASS Close Encounters presents virtual programming with the artists accessible through our Instagram @massgallery.

Stay tuned into our website, Instagram feed, or Facebook page for all the latest on upcoming events as they develop.

staycation iv: (un)promised potential will be on view at MASS Gallery from February 13 through March 14, with a COVID safe opening weekend on February 13 from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and February 14 from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. 

Gallery visits are available by appointment only. Please use this link to make a reservation. If you would like to request a time outside of the listed hours, please email us at info@massgallery.org The gallery is limited to one household (up to 3 people) at a time. Please arrive on time for your reservation. Appointments will not be extended due to late arrival. Masks are required both in the gallery and outside. Please maintain a distance of 6 feet between yourself and others. If you are exhibiting symptoms, have tested positive, or have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, please stay home.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Robert Jackson Harrington

Robert Jackson Harrington creates drawings and sculptural installations from everyday materials that center on the concept of potential. Harrington’s work aims to lead the viewer to believe that his art somehow “works,” by providing a false narrative that his creations perform some kinetic function or illustrate a scheme of some unknown contraption. The arrangements, however, merely act as a stimulus or catalyst, suggesting a situation or an action that compels the viewer to respond.

Recent exhibitions include Useless Systems at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, TX and C wut stix, at Bill’s Junk in Houston, TX. Harrington currently directs the Museum of Pocket Art and is a member of the Center for Experimental Practice and the curatorial collective, Los Outsiders, based in Austin, TX. Forthcoming exhibitions include No Small Parts at Xolo Gallery in El Paso, TX.

Annie Miller

Annie Miller’s work explores the space of sensuality and desire. Rather than the work describing the climactic fulfillment of longing, it points to the inability to fully realize these desires and a reckoning with cultural expectations of femininity, fecundity, and aging. Miller holds an MFA in Studio Art (Painting) from The University of Texas at Austin and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from California State University Fullerton.

Exhibitions of her work include Cage Match Project at The Museum of Human Achievement, The Courtyard Gallery, and CoLab Projects (Austin); WANUSAY (Montreal); McSweeney’s Believer Logger; and Icebox Project Space (Philadelphia). Miller is a lecturer in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. She lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Liz Rodda

Liz Rodda employs video, sound, sculpture, and image making to build psychological tension, absurdity, and states of disassociation. She moves freely between materials and strategies to keep the work fresh and moving forward. Her videos are the result of pairing disparate imagery and sound to invest new meanings into the original footage. Her works on paper are made quickly, in a single session, to record a particular mood and sensibility. She builds color and shape intuitively until a new and absurd logic emerges. Regardless of form, her works are the result of pitting disparate ideas and sensibilities against one another, often revealing how closely they are connected.

Liz Rodda is an Austin, Texas-based artist and Associate Professor at  Texas State University where she founded the Expanded Media Studio Art  Area, dedicated to time-based practices. Her work has been screened and exhibited in a range of spaces from museums to non-profit galleries, including MOCA Miami, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Ditch Projects, and the Museum of Human Achievement. Liz is also a co-programmer for Experimental Response Cinema.

Tammie Rubin

Tammie Rubin is an artist whose sculptural practice considers the intrinsic power of objects as signifiers, wishful contraptions, and mythic relics, while investigating the tension between the readymade and the handcrafted. Artworks explore the commingling of historical, familial, biographical, and fictional narratives paired with objects denoting time, transformation, and identity. Using intricate motifs, Rubin delves into themes involving ritual, domestic and liturgical objects, mapping, migration, magical thinking, and sensual desire. Her sculptures open up dream-like spaces of unexpected associations and dislocations.

Rubin has exhibited widely across the country, including Women & Their Work, Austin, TX; the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX; Horton Gallery, San Joaquin Delta College, Stockton, CA; George Carver Museum, Austin, TX; Charak Gallery at Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO; the Sarah M. Hurt Gallery at the Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN; Art and Design Gallery at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. A recipient of grants from Cultural Arts Division City of Austin, Artist Trust Grants for Artist Projects Seattle, and an Artist Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Her work has received reviews in online and printed publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Glasstire, Sightlines, fields, Conflict of Interest, Arts and Culture Texas, Ceramics: Art & Perception, and Ceramics Monthly. 

MASS is funded in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department. MASS is also supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts and by generous contributions from private donors.