Date
22 November 2016
Tags

Vestiges: three invited artists live and find inspiration in the defiant city of Detroit

Share

Date
22 November 2016

Share

Detroit is out in force. More than 1,000 people have descended on Eastern Market to visit the Red Bull House of Art. The show, titled Vestiges, marks the culmination of a three month residency by three invited artists. Eastern market is a thriving part of the city that each Saturday bubbles to life. The once utilitarian buildings are awash with large murals by a roster of local and US-wide artists, the House of Art sits rather anonymously, just off the main square, but tonight the queue trails out the door. Tonight, Eastern Market is bouncing.

This particular show, curated by Matt Eaton, exhibits works by Layla Abbadon, Coby Kennedy and Beau Stanton. The trio have been living and working on site, developing ideas for the show as they familiarised themselves with each other and the city. They have been supported by Eaton and an army of assistants who have all participated in the House of Art programme in earlier cycles. The opening night is packed with people from all walks of life who are eager to engage with the creative arts in the city.

It would be easy to be cynical about the initiative: a large multinational drinks and events company occupying a post-industrial building in a city that, post-bankruptcy, is undergoing, in parts, an accelerating programme of gentrification. But there is nothing else like this in Detroit, a place whose fortunes are so readily visible across the urban landscape. Red Bull has a light touch approach, allowing each artist freedom to spend a healthy $16,000 budget on whatever they want, and allows them to keep all the money from sales of the work on show. Since it was founded in 2011, the House of Art has supported over 80 artists and hosted 11 shows alongside events, workshops and talks. For three months the invited artists have lived, worked and found inspiration in the city.

Left

Vestiges: opening night

Right

Vestiges: opening night

Above
Left

Vestiges: opening night

Right

Vestiges: opening night

Above

Vestiges: opening night

Above

Exterior of the House of Art

In the vast basement room, the artists are showing a series of installation pieces, all wildly different in style, but are united in the spirit of investigation. Beau’s work is the most readily inspired by the city, a series of mosaics that are produced using reclaimed materials from the derelict buildings across Detroit and directly reference the Geza Maroti murals on the wall of the Art Deco, Albert Khan-designed, Fisher-building that crowns the skyline.

“Traditionally I am a painter and I paint a lot of murals. I am translating that into mosaics for this show,” he explains. “I had some some ideas, but they all went out of the window. I didn’t know what I was going to do until three weeks into the residency. I had spent some time exploring, and walked around and came up with the found material mosaic concept. Even though I had been here before, everything changes when you spend a protracted amount of time in a place. I think we all went through different iterations of our designs. There are iterations of pieces that I think were failures and then reworked in the show.”

His work has recurring motifs of labyrinths, industry and death, and owe a lot to the material and artistic heritage of the city drawing on themes apparent in Diego Rivera’s stunning murals at the Detroit Institute of Art and the economic decline of Detroit, maybe even the moral decline of America. “I was just taking things, but a lot of these things are in the garbage. I have found piles of amazing glass and marble from abandoned hotels,” says Beau of his creative process. “The work is made of Detroit. The remnants of its architecture. It’s out of place in time. It’s from a visual lexicon that I have been developing in my paintings – creating a weird alternate reality.”

Above

Vestiges: gallery installations

Lala has developed a technique of creating weaved photocollages that are an investigation into the aesthetics of feminism and self identity. The residency has seen her further the concepts into large, immersive pieces that take her obsession with colour and chaos into new territory. “Being in Detroit has this freedom and lawlessness to it,” she says of her time in the city. “There’s this ‘do whatever the fuck you want’ idea and nature that I love. Maybe I’ve been missing that in my art, in trying to be successful. Here, I’ve met hundreds of people and had a lot of fun – these experiences have led to freedom.”

Her art is bold and bright, her usual practice is to hand weave images together to create complex works that play with light and composition. In the House of Art, given much larger gallery space to play with, Lala has turned her 2D work into 3D installations – some more successful than others – but the opportunity the residency has offered has increased her ambitions. “This residency will set me up for next year and for museum shows,” she explains. “Now I use a lot of the concepts from the different work practices in three-dimensional form with sound, its more experiential.”

Coby is the disruptor of the group, more readily political in his actions and seeks to provoke the audience. His main artwork is a salvaged speedboat that he destroyed and put back together, having dragged it through the streets of Detroit before asking locals to fling Molotov cocktails at it. Above, a film titled The Ark of Sisyphus Negroniocus The Younger shows one of his assistants stripped to the waist attempting to move the boat single handed. Everyone is stopping to watch It, and in light of the election is seems remarkably prescient.

Above

Coby Kennedy: White Tees

“I spent two months learning how to approach Detroit artistically. It’s a quagmire. Some people say it is insular. It has its own ways of life and is enclosed from the outside world. People’s interactions are opposite. It has its own rules,” he says of his time in the city. “Everything just clicked and worked out at the beginning of the third month.”

Another work that catches the eye is the White Tees, a series of wood sculptures coated in kevlar and dipped in resin. “The resin that is impregnated with materials you would use to make drugs and amphetamines. Lye, Baking soda and the like.” he says. “Those are timelines of crack cocaine and its affect on different parts of America.”

All three artists have embraced the city, understood the privilege of the residency and the opportunity the House of Art programme has offered them. At the opening, many pieces are sold and the crowd discuss the work in the wake of the election result, the fortunes of the city and what the future holds. It’s a remarkable sight, in more established art communities exhibition openings can be bland, stale affairs, but here there are people from all walks of life enjoying what’s on offer.

The engine behind the House of Art is the curator Matt Eaton. Matt is an artist himself, and has been instrumental in the art scene in the city: founding galleries, sorting large scale commissions across Detroit, and organising the residency programme for the House of Art. Quietly spoken and hugely engaging, he speaks passionately about the initiative, and entirely without ego. It’s Matt’s vision and selfless nature that allows the House of Art to thrive. He knows everyone in the city, and everyone knows him.

Prior to living in Detroit he worked in the art world in New York and London. “There had been other House of Arts around the world that were less successful, as they were dominated by one person’s personality and taste. People wanted to show what they were when curating, rather than show the artists," he says of the programme. “My insecurities as an artist allowed me to separate my own tastes from what needed to be addressed and acknowledged in a local arts community. It’s about people are being creative and spending their life choosing to be an artist. I needed to be open minded and see past what I thought was good and bad to find artists that were doing something interesting. So my job evolved into the role as a developer of a programme that I thought would be useful to Detroit and residents that would be honest and sincere.”

Above

Beau Stanton: Detroit and Mortal Coil

Detroit served as his muse, and now it serves as a muse for those he invites to take residence. “It’s funny, there’s been a wonderful vibrant arts community here for many years. Decades before anyone acknowledged it, but it’s hard to access. As it’s such a small city there are limited outlets for artists. So everyone aspires toward the same thing. There’s a lot of competition in a small community. There’s so much creativity here, but we are still labelled as the motown – motor city. It’s a false label and limiting,” he explains. "The idea here is to appeal to artists and appeal to the masses who are interested too. Bring them in to in a more inclusive process, mentoring young artists. “House of Art has been a vessel for that conversation. I see the House of Art as something like that. You aren’t just experiencing an art show, you are experiencing each other. It’s about giving arts a bigger footprint here in the city. It helps peoples acknowledge their presence in art history in the city.”

This is the first iteration of the residency that has artists invited into the House of Art. Matt, as ever, is self deprecating about the reasons for bringing the individuals in. “I had known Beau for several years. I get an idea for what people are interested in. I knew this was an opportunity for him to tell a story that he hadn’t been able to tell in New York,” he says. “I bumped into Coby in Miami last year and he said to me that he had just graduated and was looking for an opportunity. I took a look at his work and thought I wanted to help him define who he was going to be after art school. With Lala, I had been following for a while in social media. I found her work intriguing and interesting, sometimes someones personality really comes out in their artwork, and I though that was the case with her. I was 100% right. That appeals to me.”

"You aren’t just experiencing an art show, you are experiencing each other. It’s about giving arts a bigger footprint here in the city. It helps peoples acknowledge their presence in art history in the city"

Matt Eaton

He goes on: “Aside from the work, I’m not concerned with what they ended up doing here. It’s about the journey, the personality, and knowing these people aren’t assholes. Then the assistants and community comes in an sees three professional artists in a collaborative environment and achieving success in that – in being creators. So it’s much more about the residual effects of them being here, rather than the physical art. The art are just anchors around which we celebrate at the end.”

The elephant in the room is the corporate presence of Red Bull – it’s not necessarily apparent why they would sponsor the programme and gallery, but Matt is convinced that the intention is good. “I asked myself that, then I asked myself why didn’t anyone else do it?” He says with a chuckle. “It’s because their model is to ‘give you wings’. What better way to give an individual wings than give them support without asking anything in return. I was sceptical at first, I don’t work for Red Bull, but I get it now. They are trying to identify people who are doing something great and give them the means to do it. It doesn’t have to change the world, but can change their life, what else can you do but try and support them. It happens across sports, music and art.”

As the last of the public file out of the opening party, the artists look exhausted but happy. Matt is being hugged and high fived, and everyone disperses to bars and clubs to continue the night. This show, and the House of Art is a roaring success. Against the backdrop of political uncertainty in a city that was built on a dream that betrayed it, creativity is being given the opportunity to thrive. The patron may not be to everyones liking, but in this buoyant corner of Detroit, with a humble and thoughtful curator at the helm, the House of Art points to opportunities that are latent in the city. Matt has designs on the House of Art trying again outside of Detroit. “My vision has always been this to be a global thing,” he says. “The impact of what we do in the community is huge. We give artists the space and means to be artists. That is fundamental to our success. Cities like New York, LA and Miami are full of people from out of town who are insanely creative but have no outlet. The goodwill and social capital you get out of this, you can’t buy. It’s win win. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

Above

Lala Abaddon: Without A Home

Above

Lala Abbadon: She Follows A Trail of Blood to Her Own Safety

Above

Beau Stanton: Terra Firma

Share Article

About the Author

Owen Pritchard

Owen joined It’s Nice That as Editor in November of 2015 leading and overseeing all editorial content across online, print and the events programme, before leaving in early 2018.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.