Exhibit to include special programs
(pictured above: A screen shot from Kevin Jerome Everson’s “The Island of St. Matthews.”)
A number of special of events are slated to coincide with “Kevin Jerome Everson: Gather Round,” which will open on Wednesday, Oct. 1 at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA).
Kevin Jerome Everson
Everson’s work ranges from paintings, sculpture and photographs, to a prolific output of films. Much of it occupies a place between fiction and documentary, where footage is edited, scripted, and re-staged or montaged with archived and found material as a dynamic method of storytelling.
Gather Round consists of films by Everson that emphasize the African American working class, as well as objects Everson has fashioned that make cameos in these films. Remembered floods, divided cities, imagined activist histories, disavowed industries — these forms of life and issues are regarded by Everson with as much care as the people in his films: rural elders with personal recollections, boisterous young girls at a fairgrounds, day laborers, cowboys and magicians.
Everson is currently a Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. His filmography includes six feature films and over 100 short form works, which have been exhibited internationally at festivals, cinemas, museums, art institutions and art biennials.
“Everson’s films bring a cinematic consciousness to the Black experience in America, revealing people’s relationship to their craft, their conditions, their processes of life and their communities,” explains Cora Fisher, the exhibition’s curator.
An image from “Everson’s 2011 film “The Equestrians,” which was shot in North Carolina.
Some of the films on display concentrate on the subjects of labor and leisure specifically in the South. “The Equestrians” (2011, 12:00, super-8, color, silent) was shot in North Carolina and focuses on the craft and style of bareback riding.
An opening reception will be held at SECCA, 750 Marguerite Drive, om Wednesday, Oct. 1 from 6-8 p.m. A free symposium held in partnership with Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) on Oct. 2, will bring together preeminent scholars of Everson’s work, of cinema studies, history and visual culture, as well as fellow artists, to convene around the artist’s work. All are welcome. It will be held from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m. in WSSU’s Hill Hall (Room L 05) and at the Diggs Gallery.
The following will participate:
•Terri Francis: Associate Professor, Communication and Culture, Indiana University;
• Michael B. Gillespie: Assistant Professor of Film, School of Interdisciplinary Arts, School of Film, and the Department of African American Studies, Ohio University;
• Sabine Gruffat: Media artist, filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Art at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
Claudrena N. Harold
• Claudrena N. Harold: Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and African Studies at the University of Virginia;
• Wesley C. Hogan: Director, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University; historian of the civil rights movement;
• Greg Tate: Writer, cultural producer, musician; and
• Sterling Brown ’22 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College.
A series of film screenings of Everson’s work will take place throughout the run of the exhibition, which runs through Dec. 1, including the world début “A Saturday Night in Mansfield Ohio” and “Grand Finale.”
On Oct. 9 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at SECCA, Everson will activate memory and oral history with the screenings of “Fifeville” and “The Island of St. Matthews.”
On Oct. 30 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at SECCA, a series of shorts by Everson will be highlighted in two parts. The screening series will conclude on Nov. 16 from 2 – 4 p.m. with the showing of Everson’s feature film “Erie.”
Screenings are $8 for general admission and $5 for students.
Learn more at http://secca.org.
