“Bone-White Burial” Exhibition

Greenpoint Terminal Gallery

This event has ended.

Greenpoint Terminal Gallery presents Bone-white Burial, a group show bringing together new work by Austin English, June Culp, B. Thom Stevenson & Cody Tumblin.

Through their construction, ghost stories are different than everyday recollections. They pass down through generations and force us to remember times and people who are gone. They communicate intimate moments and relationships plagued by unrest. They are emotional stamps, immortalized. Many stem from personal narratives of longing and romance.

An example is (one of my favorite pieces of New England folklore) “The Sarah Soule;” a story about a bloody lopsided love triangle. The story goes:

In 1812, two young sailers Charles Jose and George Levertt fell in love with the beauty, Sarah Soule. George won her heart and named his ship after her, but Charles did not leave the two alone and happy. He hexed the ship, and, after the engagement, bad luck followed the Captain. Eventually, Charles stalked The Sarah Soul, and in a jealous rage attacked his rival, murdering the crew and knotting George to the mast, leaving him to experience loneliness and drift into the abyss. The story reveals that the souls of his men were exhumed, and you can sometimes see the silver bodies sailing the lover’s ship through foggy waters (perhaps to find the captains young wife.)

Displaying a similar psychologic make-up, the artwork in the show centers around an emotional communication of history, processing memories, and distributing them through a narrative practice. The perversity or darkness represented in the subjects captivates curiosity. Like a good ghost story, the subjects are a touch macabre, but the work moves beyond the surface-level conceptions of the representational images. A heaviness hangs above the spiders, relics, and portraits. A sense of sentimentality and affection heightens the mystery surrounding the images.