West Exhibition Integrates Sculpture and Space
In spring 2018, the UT Downtown Gallery hosted an exhibition by Christina West, an Atlanta-based artist and associate professor at the Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. Stage Left was an immersive, site-specific installation constructed with the aid of School of Art graduate students at the UT Downtown Gallery.
The exhibition integrated West’s incredibly detailed figurative sculptures into a space that was suggestive of a house, playfully alluding to the idea of the home as a stage set. She used domestic objects such as sheets, blinds, picture frames, and mirrors to create a sense of being in a private space. Visitors had to bend, squat, and peek around stud walls and corners to view hidden tableaux, often catching their own reflections throughout the space, highlighting their own participation in the scenes.
Exhibition coordinator Eric Cagley believes West’s exhibition was an especially important one for students to experience, not only because West is an extremely well-known and respected figure in the ceramics and academic worlds, but also because of the care she took in creating a complex show.
“Christina’s Stage Left incorporates multiple materials and techniques – figurative sculpture, ceramics, mold-making, and set design,” Cagley says. “She thoughtfully considered every aspect of the show, from the initial design of the site-specific installation at the Downtown Gallery, all the way down to the tint and finish of the wall paint, and the color and temperature of the light bulbs.”