When “Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts” opens at Milwaukee Art Museum on Friday, May 30, it will mark the most comprehensive look at the work of the Montreal-based artist in a decade.
The show, which includes more than 40 recent works by the sculptor, photographer and video artist, also has installations specific to MAM.
It will all be on view through Sunday, Aug. 31 in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts on the museum’s lower level.
“While photographs increasingly lose trust as conveyors of knowledge, Erin Shirreff’s work, which dwells in the place between image and object, has only become more relevant,” says exhibition curator Kristen Gaylord, who is MAM’s Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts.
“I have long admired her thoughtful approach to the generative potential of representation, and it has been a joy to collaborate with her in bringing this wide-ranging presentation of her recent work to Milwaukee.”
Shirreff will visit MAM on Thursday, Aug. 7 to give a talk in Lubar Auditorium, and will return on Thursday, Aug. 28 to take part in the Haberman Local Luminaries program.
Born in 1975 and trained as a sculptor, Shirref’s work shatters boundaries and, Gaylord notes, “explores the gap between images and the things they picture. (She) understands photography as a significant but imperfect means of conveying three-dimensional objects.
"Her work focuses on the reproductions through which we often access art, inviting audiences to consider how each of us sees and interprets the world around us. Shifting across time, material, and dimension, her art rewards in-person engagement and slow, close looking.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
