The latest exhibit in the Coleman Burke Gallery in Fort Andross is turning one person's trash into another's artwork.
The current show, "!ND!V!DUALS: There's No Such Thing As Panthers," is comprised of sculptures that were constructed using found and recycled materials from the Brunswick town dump.
Luke O'Sullivan, Colin Dreisch, Andrew Meers, and Dom Casserly are the artists and creators behind !ND!V!DUALS. They became involved with the Coleman Burke Gallery because of their connection to Lecturer of Art John Bisbee, the founder and director of the gallery. Several of the artists met Bisbee at the Art Institute of Boston and later participated in a similar sculpture project at Bonaroo, a music festival in Tennessee.
Although all four artists have disparate careers, they found common ground on this project which incorporated sculpture, animals, and unique materials.
With !ND!V!DUALS, the four artists gathered pieces from the Brunswick dump and brought them into the gallery space to create large anthropomorphic animals.
"Because they come from used materials, they have the story of age and of a history. They are richer and weathered," Mark Wethli, professor of art and co-director of the gallery, said about the expressive nature of the animals as a result of the creative pieces from which they were sculpted.
The process with which the artists created these sculptures is evocative because they did not arbitrarily use material from the dump but rather capitalized on the intricacies and characteristics of the individual materials.
"For that reason, the sculptures have two identities: that of the material pieces and that of the animal that the pieces create. It's a type of metaphor," Wethli said.
Although the artists embarked on a similar endeavor at Bonaroo, !ND!V!DUALS is a show that represents only Brunswick because it is completely comprised of materials used, discarded , and found within the town.
This inherent "Brunswick-ness" coincides with the mission of the gallery, which "is to produce art that is unique to Brunswick," according to Wethli.
The gallery room is an active partner in all the projects that it hosts because all shows are made within it.
"Thus the connection to the contemporaneous and to Brunswick in !ND!V!DUALS and to all Coleman Burke Gallery's exhibits are not incidental," Wethli added.
OnWednesday, September 16, at 9 a.m., the four artists will be present in the gallery to explain their pieces and processes. O'Sullivan, Dreisch, Meers and Casserly will also speak about their own individual and highly distinct artistic careers and projects. The gallery talk is free and open to the public.