Rebecca Arnold, Artist Lecture: Francis Cape

On Wednesday, November 18, Francis Cape came to lecture at the VCU Student Commons Theater. He was okay - not a terribly good speaker. But his work was pretty interesting.

Originally trained as a woodcarver, Francis Cape received his MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He currently lives in Narrowsburg, NY and has exhibited his work in the United States. Some of the places he has work in include the St. Louis Art Museum; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Eli Marsh Gallery, Amherst College, Amherst, MA; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH. He also has work in galleries in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Some of the things that Cape talked to us about were his interests in sharing visions with each other. He discussed the posed question of “what an artist does”, which is to see, and share that view with others. This might explain why he does much of his work about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Working as a disaster-relief hand in New Orleans, Cape created the installation Waterline, which features photographs Cape took in the flooded middle-class neighborhoods of St. Roch and Gentilly after Hurricane Katrina’s devastating hit.

Francis Cape, Waterline, 2006, 17 framed C-prints, image size 11 1/4 x16 1/2 inches; frame size 17 x 25 inches each, dimensions variable

The domestic devastation in these photographs hang above a wainscot of painted paneling, carefully measured to where the water line rose in most homes during Katrina.

Another New Orleans related project Francis Cape is noteworthy of is his piece called "London Avenue." This 8-by-13 foot wall, which is also the standard size in the houses in St. Roche and Gentilly, shares room with pieces of a desk, chest, chair and wardrobe. He contrasts this piece with another installation, where Cape pairs similarly inspired, impeccably built sculptures with photographs of wreckage taken in New Orleans, upstate New York and Maine

London Avenue, 2008, 96 x 156 x 36 inches, poplar, text, sandbags (view from gallery entrance)

“He uses the spaces of these installations to consider a host of difficult issues relating not just to New Orleans but to a general cycle of American production and consumption, and to the legacy of modernist debates surrounding utility and ornamentation, social idealism and mass consumerism. With this body of work, Cape poses the question: how can we re-imagine forms and models of production in response both to historical precedent and current disaster?” – FrancisCape.com

Francis Cape, 258 Main Street, 2002, 89 x 89 x 20 inches, wood & paint

This piece was built for Floor to Ceiling at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Francis Cape wanted to create a piece that was a fragment of a putative further history. The window in the work is actually part of the museum.

Overall, I liked viewing Francis Cape’s work. His speaking was hard to follow, as he jumped from one subject to the next, but he at least had some interesting things to say. I must say, however, that I’m guilty of being tired of all the political issues being beat into the ground by photographers. We get it already; you don’t need to show us any more. Thank you