Tammy Rae Carland: Live From Somewhere

Exhibition Dates: April 1 - April 30, 2019

Linfield Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Tammy Rae Carland. Titled “Live From Somewhere,” the show explores the affinities between theater and photography, the pressures of performance, and the enchantments of the “live.” This exhibition consists of artworks in a range of media, including a seven-minute video, color photographs, black-and-white photograms that were originally exhibited in an exhibition of the same title at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco in 2014.

The central thesis of the exhibition is contained in a single-channel video titled Live from Somewhere, inspired by the opening sequence of the late Gilda Radner’s 1979 one-woman stage show. In the film, a hand-controlled spotlight enters and exits a theatrical proscenium, searching for the center of attention, who never arrives. The light paces, scans, struts and frets – itself becoming an abstract actor upon the stage. An expression of performance anxiety, the video suggests the stage fright of the reluctant entertainer as well as the collective unease of the expectant audience. A meditation on the act of searching, the video harks back to the theater of the absurd (particularly Waiting for Godot) and looks askance at the incongruity of being “stood up” by a “stand up.”

Carland has also made a series of large-scale color photographs that explore similar themes of live performance and death, absence and presence, and the magic of the ephemeral. Smoke Screen, for example, stars a waft of mysterious fog, which emanates from a suggestive slit between two blue stage curtains. Balancing Act features nineteen gold chairs acrobatically stacked to the point where they threaten to topple, framed by velvet drapes with scalloped valance. Tipping Point presents a group of ladders arranged in a precarious assemblage, suggestive of vaudevillian collaborations, while Ghost Light portrays a single enchanted mop, intent on a solo performance. To varying degrees these photographs include reference to the luscious, sensual folds of curtains, the culturally loaded fabric that divides artist from audience, inside from outside, fantasy from reality.

Finally, Carland’s photograms are unique works made directly on photographic paper with the use of a disco mirror ball, hence the title, Discograms. They circle back to the video Live from Somewhere and then spin off into an arena where they seek their own limelight. The Discograms challenge the primacy of the stage by evoking an environment where “live” music has died out and the audience becomes the show.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tammy Rae Carland (b. 1965) received her MFA from the University California, Irvine in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, NY in 1995. Carland’s work has been screened and exhibited in public institutions and biennales in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin and Sydney. Carland was a key member of the Riot Grrrl movement in the ’90s and a co-owner of the independent lesbian music label Mr. Lady Records and Videos. She will have work in upcoming group exhibitions at Oakland Museum and Wattis Institute. Carland is Provost of California College of the Arts, and lives and works in Oakland, CA. Carland is the provost of California College of the Arts, and lives in Oakland, CA.