Kith & Kin: Things Well Known
Curated by Lindsey Cummins
Kith and Kin: Things Well Known, a two-person exhibition organized by Wave Pool’s 2024 Curatorial Resident, Lindsey Cummins, is an exploration into the collective significance of interpersonal relationships and their connection to place within the Ohio River Valley region. In the works of artists Rachael Banks and Kacey Slone, concerns surrounding family, home, folklore, and the passage of time find resonance in ephemeral and ordinary moments.
Works in the exhibition touch on the interdependence between person and place as well as within communal structures. Familiar domestic moments are tenderly memorialized such as in Slone’s “A Friend for the Unsent” and Bank’s “I only fear God.” The artists’ work calls to mind the overwhelming and often under-acknowledged impact of closeness. Reflections surrounding immediacy in all its forms become stories through which the two artists imagine and reimagine states of belonging. Grappling with who they are, through where they are and who they’re with, both Slone and Banks traverse close quarters with a soft touch—neither surrendering to sentimentality nor indifference.
In both artists’ work there is an ode to the region, one that spans further than the big cities and the Appalachian mountains. Slone was born in rural Indiana, and has spent time outside the state before returning home. Banks was born and raised in Louisville but primarily photographs her family on their Bagdad, KY property.
This exhibition attempts to challenge stereotypes that have been set and negotiated amongst artists' who work in the region. While place and the communities who come to inhabit it remain integral, Kith and Kin challenges the way artists and their work have been narrowly situated within discourse on the region, constricting them down to exemplars of a greater American Western mythology that is fascinated with the iconography of rural life.
Flyer by El Bruner
