Future Friends
October 18, 2006- November 30, 2006
Reception: October 18, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
32-36 Little West 12th Street: 32 W 12th St
Curated by Hanna Fushihara Aron
“Future Friends” was the title of the first of a handful of gatherings that occurred, bringing members of an unnamed underground together for a weekend of music, art, camping, and cooking. It was named in the hopes that any stranger you met there could potentially become a future friend. The photographs in this show by
Ports Bishop were taken at this first festival as well as at a subsequent get-together the following year. There will be eight large, mounted prints, most of which are portraits, which are Bishop’s specialty. There is one landscape, a photograph of a field at dusk, which embodies the freedom from the constraints of mainstream daily life which these underground heroes typically retreat from. There is also a photo of a stack of music speakers and amplifiers, a special set-up of the one man noise band Kites, in the middle of a grassy forest lawn. The irony or improbability of such a combination charges the piece with a quiet energy. On one gallery wall, there will be a collage of smaller unmounted photographs from the series to let viewers experience more faces and events from these gatherings, as if they, themselves were walking through the fields and nodding “hello” to each of them.
Many of the portraits are of people who normally shun public spotlight; people who purposefully choose to live life away from the fast track. Most are from the Providence underground or are in some way related or intertwined with the scene there that has spawned numerous costumed, day-glo, art/music freaks like Lightning Bolt, Forcefield, and Dearraindrop. Being of the scene since his early days at college in Boston, Bishop was able to capture the humanity in each of his subjects; taking them in as unique individuals, as only a friend can do. Bishop did not originally intend to take these photographs to show publicly. It had been more of a personal project, his own kind of family snap shots from an era in his life that he was sure needed to be remembered.
The Future Friends, Bishop’s monograph, will be available for purchase at the gallery and also through the web by emailing nypublishing@hpgrp.com.
Ports Bishop was born in 1976 and raised in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was educated at Boston University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently on the faculty at the International Center of Photography where several of his photos are currently on view at the ICP Faculty Exhibition. He has also done commercial work for clients such as AT & T, Brooklyn Industries and the Financial Times. Future Friends is his first solo exhibition in New York City. Future Friends has previously shown in Tokyo, Japan.
Guest curator, Hanna Fushihara Aron, is the owner of Little Cakes Little Gallery in New York City as well as the creative director of HaNNa Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Her Little Cakes Little Gallery was recently called “one of the more distinctive galleries in the city” in a review by the New York Times.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | map 32-36 Little West 12th Street | | Address | 32 W 12th St, 2nd Fl New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States | | Phone | 212-727-2491 | | Fax | 212-727-7030 | | Hours | Tue-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-6 | | | |
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