NEWPORT, R.I. – A site-specific installation of Elizabeth Duffy’s new work, “Overlander,” will be on exhibit Feb. 16 through March 14 at The Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery, located in the Antone Academic Center on Lawrence Avenue.
Free and open to the public, this exhibit opens with a reception for the artist from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16.
Through an inventive use of drawing, objects, textiles, wallpaper and upholstered furniture, Duffy explores the role of pattern in data security and interior decoration. This show’s centerpiece, a custom restored horse-drawn carriage, points to the Antone Academic Center’s origins as a carriage house.
“My current body of work investigates perceived ideals about security and comfortable living and its attendant risks,” Duffy says. “I create installations using objects covered with patterns from the inside of security envelopes from bills and credit card offers I receive in the mail-- so-called Data Protection Patterning.
“The purpose of these patterns is to keep us secure; in turning them outward their role becomes subverted,” she says. “These installations include upholstered furniture, wallpaper, curtains, clothing, embroideries, as well as drawings and objects. The installations are arranged to evoke domestic house museums or furniture showrooms.”
Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery hours are Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The Gallery is closed on Mondays.
Duffy teaches sculpture and drawing in the Visual Art Studies Program at Roger Williams University. She studied art at Rutgers College, The New York Studio School, Hunter and has a MFA from Brooklyn College. She has taught at Dartmouth College, The Delaware College of Art and Design and Purchase College/SUNY.
She has exhibited work at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, White Columns, Dartmouth College's Strauss Gallery, Pentimenti Gallery, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Nikolai Fine Art, Holland Tunnel Gallery, Wave Hill, The Islip Museum, raw & co. Gallery, Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery and Muriel Guépin Gallery.
She has held residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale and is the recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Pollock Krasner Foundation, and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Her recent Artist’s book: Enclosure/Exposure, was published by Purgatory Pie Press and presented by Printed Matter in NYC.
In 2005 Duffy began a collaboration with Brian Miller and established the Loku Press. Together they have published artists’ books and have exhibited their ongoing project “A Series of Minor Miracles.”
Her work is in the collections of Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, the Heard Museum, Dartmouth College Rauner Special Collections Library, and in numerous private collections. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Art News, Art on Paper, the Boston Globe, the Village Voice, and many other publications.