Ellen Gallagher: Projections | Art21 "Exclusive"

Episode #054: Artist Ellen Gallagher recounts her childhood obsession with projecting films, paired with documentation of her work "Murmur" (2003-04) installed at Gagosian Gallery in New York.

Repetition and revision are central to Ellen Gallagher's treatment of advertisements appropriated from popular magazines. Initially, Gallagher was drawn to wig advertisements because of their grid-like structure. Later she realized that it was the accompanying language that attracted her, and she began to bring these narratives into her painting, making them function through the characters of the advertisements as a kind of chart of lost worlds. Upon closer inspection, googly eyes, reconfigured wigs, tongues, and lips of minstrel caricatures multiply in detail. Although her work has often been interpreted as an examination of race, Gallagher also suggests a more formal reading: from afar, the work appears abstract and minimal, and employs grids as both structure and metaphors for experience.

Learn more about Ellen Gallagher:
http://www.art21.org/artists/ellen-gallagher

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Tom Hurwitz, Eddie Marritz, Mark Mandler, and Roger Phenix. Editor: Jenny Chiurco and Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Ellen Gallagher & Edgar Cleijne. Special Thanks: Gagosian Gallery, New York and Two Palms Press, New York.

You know, do you remember
those viewfinders from the 70s?

I was really into that and I had
viewfinders and I had a projector.

I was allowed to bring boys up to my room

IF I was going to show them
these projections I had.

So that was really exciting.

I did really like showing these projections
in the dark and telling stories.

There were certain stories

that were supposed to go with them,

but I would change the order
and make up other stories.

That was a very sort of calm moment for me,

these stories I would make up.

The Red Baron was a favorite one,

and then mixed with, if you can imagine,

the story about Bessie Smith
and her car accident,

and that she wasn't able
to get to the hospital

--or she was able to get to the hospital,

and they wouldn’t take care of her.

So these slides would all get
jumbled together

and would end up being
part of my slide show and my narration.

And you know, it kept people really quiet.

I mean, usually I was really territorial

and really fighting with boys
from my neighborhood a lot,

and they were very--at least momentarily--

obedient and quiet and listening.