Winslow Garage
Opening October 25th/ 3-6 pm. Holly Topping/ Djinn, Sirens, and Other Troubles
Holly Topping
Djinn, Sirens and Other Troubles
Opening October 25th
Winslow Garage is pleased to present Djinns, Sirens, and Other Troubles by Los Angeles artist Holly Topping. In this exhibition, Topping presents an installation of painted hanging gourds, small paintings on wood crosscuts, and a selection of watercolors on paper. Known for her highly skilled paintings of figures with cheeky contemporary concerns, this work presents the artist in full play mode. Naughty sprites cavort through air and sea causing the occasional disaster and disembodied arms elegantly smoke cigarettes in fantasy landscapes. Drawing from mythology, memory, and contemporary experience, these works reveal the strange ways we adapt to uncertainty and catastrophe.
Holly Topping is a Los Angeles–based artist and educator whose paintings explore the strange intersections of personal history, cultural memory, gender, humor, and unease. She received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and has exhibited extensively in Los Angeles and nationally, including solo exhibitions at Angles Gallery and Orange Coast College. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Bass Museum of Art, Torrance Art Museum, and the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, and is held in the collections of the Bass Museum of Art and the Museum of Sex in New York. Topping has been a tenured professor of art at Orange Coast College since 2008.
Elizabeth Withstandley
The Accident
The Accident is a mixed media installation by artist Elizabeth Withstandley. The installation is comprised of a series of photographic images and an accompanying audio loop. In this work, Withstandley explores the frankness of children and how they express their thoughts and emotions through words. Images of a child with a head injury are paired with “get well” cards from children who witnessed the accident. Audio of the victim’s recollection of events turns a seemingly tragic moment into a poignantly humorous observation.
Withstandley’s work has taken the form of conceptually based photographic series, film, video and installation. Exploring American culture through non-fiction and fictitious situations, the work explores self worth, ones’ position in society, and how we are defined as people with an emphasis on social norms and outcasts.
Withstandley studied photography at Pratt Institute and The University of Alabama. She is a co-founder of the not-for profit space, Locust Projects, in Miami, FL.
Her work has been exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; The Moore Space, Miami; Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami; The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; The Tel Aviv Artists’ Studios, Israel; The Bass Museum, Miami; Cultural Center, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and many others.