Obstacle Course

Cathy McLaurin and Courtney McClellan are co-curating Obstacle Course, a group exhibition at the New Art Center, slated form Spring 2016.

Here is a bit about it: 

Obstacle Course is a group exhibition that addresses the complexity of collaboration. Often envisioned as utopian, the collaborations constructed by the included artists are instead, reactive and instructional, conversational, but dynamic. In both micro and macro ways the work examines a shift in the division of labor between artist and performer, producer and participant. Following the lineage of delegated performance, each artist seeks a unique adoption or adaptation of knowledge, skill, and experience. Through play and investigation, roles change. Artists, subjects, and viewers alike advise, demand, teach, listen, and translate each others actions, words and images.

Obstacle Course grew out of many discussions about the social and political complications of working with people who are not artists. Drawn to the lively exchange of making collaborative or participatory art, many artists find that creating this work is fraught with issues of access, power, and compromise. Placing process before product, Obstacle Course opens an honest and revealing dialogue about the offerings and challenges of collaborative/delegated/institutional making.

This Exhibition incorporates drawing, sculpture, photography, video, writing, and performance. It will result in an integrated gallery installation, as well as scheduled live performance.

Obstacle Course includes artists Joanna Tam (Boston), Cathy McLaurin (Boston) Garett Yahn (Boston), Nicola Singh (UK), Ghana ThinkTank (US), Tal Gafny (Israel) and Alyssa Carson (US), Courtney McClellan (Boston), and Caitlin Berrigan (Germany). 

To Find out more about Obstacle Course please see the NAC press release. 

Obstacle Course Press Release

More About Us

Courtney McClellan is an artist and writer from Greensboro, N.C. She received a duel BA in Studio Art and Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008, and her MFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2013. An interdisciplinary artist, McClellan often works at the intersection of sculpture, performance and writing. She has shown nationally, including recent shows at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA; The Hanes Art Center in Chapel Hill, NC; Dashboard Co-op in Atlanta, GA; and Howard Art Projects in Boston, MA, among others. In 2013-2014, she was the Fountainhead Fellow in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She currently lives and works in Boston, M.A.
www.courtneymcclellan.com

Cathy McLaurin is an artist engaged in an investigative art practice in which research operates as both content and form.  Her multi-narrative projects integrate performance, photography, video, and bookmaking.  Her work has been shown internationally, including recently in a solo exhibition at Duke University's Power Plant Gallery, Durham, NC; in group exhibitions, such as Drawing Connections, Mills Gallery, Boston, MA, and Praxis: MAP (memory and performance), Little Berlin, Philadelphia, PA; and in an upcoming performance at PROCESS, Toronto, Canada.  Her work is included in Creative Capital's On Our Radar, as well as Artists in Contexts' Artists' Prospectus for the Nation.  She received an MFA from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2013.  Originally from North Carolina, she currently lives and works in Boston, MA.

www.cathymclaurin.com