4.3

Show #20
LEGACY RUSSELL: Dirty Talk | Clean Food

Curated by Keri Oldham

Dates: May 15th -June 28th 2014

Opening: Thursday May 15th, 6:00-8:00pm

Full Artist Statement

Field Projects is proud to present our twentieth exhibition to date, Legacy Russell’s Dirty Talk | Clean Food.  The artist’s first gallery solo will include video work that explores the tensions between private and public, food and language, cleanliness and dirt.  Cleanliness is a cultural obsession.  With food there is a constant social fear of contamination projected into what we ingest.  Similarly, day to day language is framed by a regular effort to have our actions and behaviors be interpreted as inoffensive and easily-digestible.

On dates we eat our way toward a kiss at the end of the night, we hold the door, pull out the chair, and pay the bill, with the hopes that these showings of courtesy and respect (a nod to social mores) may lead at some point to greater intimacies, or give way to something even more abstract – love.  How to get from the dinner table to the bedroom? How to shrug off the stiffness of etiquette in the interest of truly exploring the limits of one's sexuality? In what ways can the dinner table and the words spoken there act as both implicit and explicit acknowledgement of values, desires and needs?  This work operates as a sketch of such experience, both study and parody, aiming to suss out the texts and subtexts introduced in the process of our communal devouring of meals en route to the devouring of one another.

Legacy Russell is an artist, writer and curator based in London.  A few of her projects include "The Kiss" (in collaboration with Clifford Owens) for Danspace Project,  Performance GIFs 2 curated by Jesse Darling for Rhizome, and ‘’The Initiation,” a commissioned performance at The Museum of Art and Design.  Her many other collaborations include work with The Bruce High Quality Foundation,  The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Creative Time, the Whitney Museum of American Art and BOMB Magazine.  She is also the London Content Partner Liaison for the online platform Artsy.