Feburary 18, 2011, Friday - Artist Talk with Rosemary Williams at The Soap Factory

Time: 7:00pm

Location:  The Soap Factory, 518 Second Street SE

Rosemary Williams’ work examines the notions of power and consumption as well as the “overlooked aspects of our everyday life.” Belongings, Williams’ most recent installation at The Soap Factory, uses video to document each and every physical aspect of her home. No stone is left unturned and no single toothpick is un-catalogued. Belongings is a catalogue of physical possession, a series of seemingly endless video loops of Williams’ identifying and recording each and every physical object within her home. The ideal effect of Belongings, according to The Soap Factory Executive Director Ben Heywood, is to consider the “futility of possession.”

While Williams' past work, such as Supermarket (2008) and Wall of Mall (2006), acted more as commentaries on society, allowing her to remain detached from the viewer. Belongings departs from this, engaging the artist herself in the final product. Williams is a visible part of Belongings, as she goes through her home and facilitates the codification and documentation of each object. Williams literally picks apart her entire private living space and challenges her audience to consider the roles each physical object plays in her home- from the intended function it may serve to the way it may have assisted in the “building of her own personal world and identity.”

About the artist:
Rosemary Williams currently lives in St. Paul Minnesota. Williams' work is exhibited regularly in New York City, and has also been shown recently in galleries in London, Minneapolis, and the Czech Republic, with a recent project in Berlin. She was a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow in Visual Arts for 2007-8.