![As Renwick was installing the tinted window film that gives the gallery a ruby-red density, she says, “I asked if the museum could clean the windows. But then once we put the red film up, we saw it accentuated the filth on the windows. And this was when the Bullseye Glass [emissions revelation] was going on. We said, ‘No, leave it!’ It’s adding another layer to the piece.”](https://opb-opb-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/KCOUJ2QQSBDL5J4THPNRQ7FXZI.jpg?auth=9fed87103e7a49100ba2da44a3545bb820f1d295c3c42fa225aff62b4fc35cef&width=150)
As Renwick was installing the tinted window film that gives the gallery a ruby-red density, she says, “I asked if the museum could clean the windows. But then once we put the red film up, we saw it accentuated the filth on the windows. And this was when the Bullseye Glass [emissions revelation] was going on. We said, ‘No, leave it!’ It’s adding another layer to the piece.”
Courtesy of Vanessa Renwick
Visual artist Vanessa Renwick has created a new installation that speaks to the “hodgepodge of horrible” we meet in modern life — a multi-screen installation featuring everything from tsunamis to coal train fires, neighborhood demolitions to cats killing songbirds — the things that leave you unable to do anything but shake your head. The work also deftly addresses how we reel ourselves back from that edge.
Renwick's installation at Portland Art Museum's APEX Gallery, called "Next-Level F---ed Up," is affecting and oddly poignant. Here's a bit of our conversation.
Q&A with Vanessa Renwick
April Baer: How did this idea come to you?
Vanessa Renwick: My friend Corey Arnold had a show; after the show we went to have dinner. I asked him about this photo on his website — a seal with some kind of box implanted on his head, looking up at you, super cute. And I asked him, "What is that about?" And he told me. [It's a photo from a marine sanctuary where volunteers feed and care for abandoned baby seals — sometimes tube feeding them.] I said, "That is next-level f---ed up." And right then, hearing myself saying that phrase, I was like, "I should make a piece."
Renwick's 20-year career has spanned cinema verite, documentary and experimental projects, as well as constructed works.
Courtesy of Vanessa Renwick
AB: What was it like to spend so much time with all these clips?
VR: The piece was pretty hard, psychologically, to work on. I was spending tons of time on the internet, bookmarking all these horrible things. There's a loop that's a mix of mountaintop removal, [Hurricane] Katrina, coal train fires. I threw Martin Shkreli in there, just for a second.
AB: Why did you end up making the choices you did?
VR: Why did these things rise to the top —
AB: Or the bottom, as it were.
VR: I don't know. I think it's kind of like art, where a museum is filled with tons of art, and maybe one piece, if you're lucky, will really hit home to your heart. Some people will [look at the piece] and say, "Well, this is the most horrible thing that's going on," and other people will think, "No, this is the most horrible thing that's going on!"
AB: Just when we feel this barrage is going to grind us down to the point of no return, the screens freeze, and the projection on the wall becomes this beautiful footage of the Painted Hills.
VR: Actually Mark Eifert shot that footage for me. I wanted to bring people out from the moment of freaking out. All of Oregon was underwater 70 million years ago. That's such a freeing thought to me, that this has been around for so long, and change has been around for so long, and change has been going on so long. Also I brought in some words from Saul Bellow: "Maybe time was invented so that misery would have an end." It ends on a very expansive, open, upbeat note.
Renwick incorporates some elements from collaborators. You'll catch clips of Colleen Plumb's footage of captive elephants in distress, and music by Michael Hurley and Marisa Anderson.
To see Vanessa Renwick work, “Next Level F---ed Up,” visit Portland Art Museum’s APEX gallery before July 17.
Renwick will give a gallery talk at the Museum Wednesday June 8th at 12:30PM.
If you're hungry for more, the Northwest Film Center will screen a collection of Renwick's films this Thursday, June 9.
And she's cooking up an extravaganza, with Sam Coomes and Marisa Anderson improvising live to Colleen's work in PAM's outdoor sculpture court July 8th at 8PM.