Sea Worthy: Exhibition, Workshops & Excursions

Presented by EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and The Gowanus Studio Space

Summer, 2011

The EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and The Gowanus Studio Space present Sea Worthy, an exhibition and series of public screenings, performances, lectures, workshops and artist-led excursions on the water. With 72 islands and over 700 miles of coastline, New York City is a formidable archipelago. This project invites discussion about water access, activates the largest open space in the city, and engages maritime themes in contemporary art practice. Sea Worthy brings together artists from here and abroad – in consultation with boat builders, world-class mariners, historians, writers, activists, and ecologists – to make new work about, around, and on the waterways of New York City in the summer of 2011.

More information about the Sea Worthy exhibition, workshops, public performances, and excursions can be found here.

Part I: Sea Worthy, Exhibition

EFA Project Space

June 10 – July 29, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-8 pm

EFA Project Space presents an exhibition featuring artists who approach water navigation as subject, pushing its potential as a mutable open platform for social experimentation as well as metaphor for personal, artistic, and collective freedom. The show includes installations, models, prints, drawings, photos, videos, and various other musings by artist-seafarers who generously impart their experience of the sea in order to refresh our perception of the land.

Some highlights include:

• Documentation of Anne Percoco’s intricate Kilmer Shrines, monuments constructed in honor of sites of some of the under-appreciated drainage systems of New Jersey.
• A full-scale print by artist, boat-builder, and Tide and Current Taxi pioneer Marie Lorenz, who commemorates abandoned, washed-up boats combed from the shores of NYC by inking and printing in the style of Japanese fish prints.
• Illustrated plans of Amze Emmons’s fantasy purchase of a decommissioned British aircraft carrier which he proposes to convert into a community for climate refugees.
• Jonathan Kaiser’s Janet II, a personal, portable vessel crafted from salvaged materials, including disassembled chairs and hundreds of plastic grocery bags. The watercraft has transported the artist along foreign waterways and is an artifact of his travels and a testament to the potential of everyday refuse.EFA Project Space, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, is located at 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018. Visit us at efanyc.org.

For press inquiries, please contact Michelle Levy, Director, EFA Project Space, at michelle@efanyc.org.