Melanie Vote — The Washhouse, One Year Later
A socially engaged Happening/Installation in conjunction with the catalog release of The Washhouse, Nothing Ever Happened Here, Melanie Vote (2020)
March 31- April 4, 2021
When painting the Washhouse series, Melanie Vote was searching for the untold stories of what might have occurred there, reckoning with a troubled North American past, masked behind a seemingly banal 100 year-old structure. In the spirit of The Washhouse, initially an outbuilding used by people to launder garments, we are asking artists to create a work on paper and hang it on a clothesline at Equity Gallery, to produce and make visible their deepest concerns and literally bring them to light. We challenge you to create a work in response to a social issue. What is troubling you, keeping you up at night? What is most important to you to reveal or disclose?.
About the Organizers:
Michael Gormley assumed the leadership position at NYAE in 2017, bringing to bear over thirty years of art world experience. Limbo Lounge, a pivotal East Village art and performance space he founded in 1980, was his inaugural foray into the New York art scene. Since that time Gormley has held key posts in galleries, professional arts organizations, academic institutions and media enterprises including VP of Education, Institute of Classical Architecture & Art; Associate Director of Fine Art, The National Arts Club; Curator, Portraits, Inc.; Dean, The New York Academy of Art and Editor-in Chief and Content Strategist, Artists Magazine. In addition to his curatorial and administrative work at NYAE, he is a frequent contributor to NYAE’s blog and maintains a fine art studio practice in painting.
Melanie Vote is a painter/multimedia artist originating from Iowa; upon completion of a BFA from Iowa State she moved east to study painting at The New York Academy of Art, receiving her MFA in 1998. Her work has been exhibited nation-wide and internationally--in New York at Flowers Gallery, The Lodge Gallery, Sloan Fine Art and DFN Gallery, the latter hosting her first solo exhibition in 2008. Additionally, her work has been shown at the Indiana Contemporary Art Center, Jenkins-Johnson Gallery of CA, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea, and at ADAH, Abu Dhabi while an artist in residence there. Most recent solo exhibitions have been at Galleria Farina in Miami and Hionas Gallery of New York.
