Open 10:30–5:00, Tuesday – Saturday
Thursday 16th July at 1pm
Join us for the GIAF key event of Jackie Nickerson’s exhibition STATESIDE – a Highlanes Gallery national tour, where Jackie will be in conversation with writer and journalist Tom Downey
STATESIDE is Jackie Nickerson’s sweeping, fragmented visual diary of a decade living and working across the USA. From streetscapes in Chicago to military installations on Hawaii, from Utah landscapes to New York skyscrapers, Nickerson used whatever camera she had at hand—medium format, 35mm, point and shoot, iPhone—to fix raw glimpses of America at this peculiar, precarious time.
Her focus was less on specific locations than on repeated motifs, as if these photos could have been taken virtually anywhere in America. Chainlink fences, basketball courts, suburban houses and classrooms, gas stations and even battleships become markers of sameness, and of the functionalism that fuel’s America’s economy.
Unlike other work that explores contemporary America, both as place and idea, Jackie Nickerson avoids ‘definitive’ images as individual works. Instead she made large prints of her work, hung them in an overlapping sequence on her studio wall, and then re- photographed them.
The result is a compelling, ongoing narrative of the complex, troubled America of today.
STATESIDE continues until Saturay 26th July.
Jackie Nickerson: STATESIDE is funded by an Arts Council of Ireland touring award.
ABOUT:
Jackie Nickerson is an American-born British artist. She divides her time between rural north County Louth and London.
Jackie Nickerson is a conceptual documentary photographer. Her work is based on years- long research and is often portraiture; she explores the identities of her subjects and the effects of working in specific environments, such as religious communities in Ireland and farms in South Africa.
Her work has been exhibited in Ireland and internationally at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Vatican Museums, Rome, and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Her work is represented in the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection, Highlanes Gallery.
Tom Downey writes about the worlds of Brooklyn firemen, Yemeni jihadis, Chinese internet vigilantes, Malagasy river guides, and Barcelona private eyes—anyone whose story moves him. A year before 9/11, Downey began producing a television documentary and reporting a book about a group of elite rescue firemen in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. Downey’s nonfiction narrative The Last Men Out: Life on the Edge at Rescue 2 Firehouse, published by Henry Holt, follows ten years in the life of their company, from the high of knocking down a wall of flames to the low of losing a brother. Downey’s related documentary, Still Riding, aired on TLC and the Discovery New York Times network.
In addition to a starred review from Kirkus and an “Editor’s Choice” designation from Reader’s Digest, the book also got great reviews: “Downey’s descriptions burn into the pages with searing intensity.” —Publisher’s Weekly. “The bonds the author formed with his subjects are evident, but Downey ultimately is a storyteller, not a firefighter. He keeps his distance, and that allows him to tell an insightful, dramatic and emotional tale.”—Terry Golway, New York Post. “This isn’t the first unvarnished portrayal of city firemen. It may be the most stark and at times unsettling. But like the firemen, Downey sees no need for apologies.” –New York Daily News.
Downey studied English Literature at Princeton University, spent a semester abroad at the American University in Cairo, and taught filmmaking at a film school in Singapore. He lives in New York.
