Mother Lode: Material and Memory
James Cohan Gallery, 48 and 52 Walker Street, New York
Organized by Abigail Ross Goodman, Molly Epstein, and Ellen Langan, “Mother lode” is a term used to indicate the primary vein of a valuable resource, or, more colloquially, to point to the real or imagined origin of something of great import or abundance. Plumbing the possibilities of this linguistic trope, this exhibition brings together more than forty artistic practices, choreographed in chapters as a collective cohabitation that offers myriad ruminations on beginnings. The artists included deploy both memory and material as generative forces, probing ideas of land as Mother Earth, the bonds of mother and child, the physical accumulation of experience, and the tending nature of ongoing diaristic pursuits. From the development of personal mythologies to processes laid bare through the cycles of extraction and regeneration, the works in this exhibition span form and medium, dating from the late 1960s to the present day. They capture the universality of lineage that unfurls in the activities of making and the inherent truths discovered in process.
