NYAB Event - Jade Townsend "Sick, Sick Wind"

Jade Townsend "Sick, Sick Wind"

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

This event has ended.

Sick, Sick Wind is an installation by Jade Townsend revolving around a constructed pig-shaped, winged battleship. After having first set sail on August 13, 2009 at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows Corona Park as part of Duke Riley’s Those About to Die Salute You — a naval battle performance modeled after the Roman ‘Naumachia,’ in which the Emperor would flood the Coliseum and force condemned prisoners to engage in bloodsport as a way of diverting the masses from impending socio-economic collapse — Townsend’s ‘pig’ battleship runs aground, transformed into a full gallery installation. Complete with masts and canons to resemble a beached decaying Spanish galleon, the giant wooden vessel appears marooned and abandoned in an incongruous interior landscape — left to rot in the indeterminate space in which it has disembarked.

Consistent with his past work, this sculptural installation stems from a combination of ingrained sources; Townsend pulls obscure references from history, literature, pop culture and song lyrics, and restructures them, forging a new configuration from the resonating parts. Comparable to stringing excerpts together from different books to transform the narrative, the work re-contextualizes the disparate elements to form a coherent entity — alluding to the increasing difficulties of raising protest against the pervasive greed within the global capitalist system. Its citizens seem to be left alone in the debris of a global shipwreck, fighting for resources and never ceasing to compete within an economic system that creates division and discourages collaboration.