NYAB Event - Park McArthur “1918 1st Ave.”

Park McArthur “1918 1st Ave.”

Essex Street

This event has ended.

During the month of August ESSEX STREET will be closed.

Starting on Sunday July 28 and continuing until August 11 Park McArthur will be presenting a work in front of the gallery.

The gallery is closed. The gate is lowered and locked. I have hung some chains and from those chains hang hangers and from those hangers hang clothes. Some of the clothes are mine, some are new, some are used. Everyday these clothes will be hosed with water. The clothes have been pinned in place to help secure them.

Lately Ive been spending time looking at clotheslines in New York City. Some of the clotheslines are used by individuals to dry their clothes and some are used by stores to display what they are selling.

Ive changed the address of the gallery to 1918 1st Ave. 1918 1st Ave. is the address of a building I came across on the way to the Frieze Art Fair, en route to crossing the 103rd Street Footbridge to Randalls Island. This building opened in 1962 as the Nurses’ Residence and Training School of the Metropolitan Hospital system. The building is now closed and abandoned. I recommend you go and look at it.

An article by Danny Hakim in the New York Times alerted me to a report about the abuse and protection of disabled people living in residential facilities in New York State. This report is called The Measure of a Society. In 2010 there were 119.68 Abuse Allegations Per 100 Occupied Beds. What is the difference between a person and an occupied bed? Here is a link to this Report. Link

Passersby have asked whether my installation is an airing of dirty laundry, a process of maintenance, or a presentation of objects for sale.

There are similarities between a clothes hanger, a frame and a curb cut.

Park McArthur was born in 1984 in North Carolina and lives and works in New York City.

She attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2010-2011 and again in 2011-2012, she is currently a faculty member.

McArthurs art has been presented at the Kitchen, New York; at Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin; at Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York; at Sculpture Center, New York; at the ICA Philadelphia; at Botkyrka Konsthall, Sweden. She has presented papers and screenings at the Society of Disability Studies in Orlando; at the University of the Arts, London; at SUNY Stonybrook; at The Graduate Center CUNY, New York; at Hunter College, New York; at the Productive Geographies Graduate Student Conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

McArthur performs alongside Oscar Tillman in the band yr.
She would like to make the building at 1918 1st Ave. a subsidized apartment building for care providers and receivers.