Travis Somerville: Burden of Consequences
Wasmer Art Gallery
January 28 - March 3, 2022
Artist Talk, 5-7pm, Thursday January 27, 2022
Social injustice and the economic and political structures that perpetuate oppression, racism in America, the refugee crisis and the current global political environment, are all issues that have been subjects in Travis Somerville’s work. He often uses stereotypical and confrontational racial imagery for its nostalgic familiarity, asking the viewer to confront their internal feelings about racism and class struggle. Somerville grew up in the Southern United States in the tumultuous 1960's and 70's surrounded by the Southern gentility that harbored underlying racism and hostility. These social dualities, contradictions and hypocrisies are exposed in his work paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations.
Sponsored by Gene and Lee Seidler and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and WGCU Public Media
Image credit: Travis Somerville, Year of Our Lord, 2020, Acrylic, collage, and gesso on found truck tarp, 118 x 123 in., Courtesy of the artist and Maus Contemporary
The work of Travis Somerville functions as a craft of anti-nostalgia and critical
memory and his sharp and creative insistence on how images and material objects are
never merely inanimate relics of a past far removed from our presents or our futures.
This video, made by John Yoyogi Fortes, follows Somerville through the installation
of an exhibition of his work at Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA.
