Wave Pool May 2024 Curatorial Residency
https://www.wavepoolgallery.org/kith-kin
Kith and Kin: Things Well Known 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. “Kith & Kin” calls attention to the interdependence between person and place and 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 and all that is so close to home, it lies almost unseen. 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, Slone and Banks traverse close quarters with a soft touch - neither surrendering to sentimentality nor indifference.
In Banks' work, tight-knit relationships are depicted through family subjects and a web of symbolism which emphasizes the allegorical role of animal life, most especially the deer. Capturing simple moments among friends and family as they unfold, Bank’s lens neither heroicizes nor condemns. Subjects positioned to face the viewer do not confront but present themselves without restraint. The photographs are achieved through a carefully nurtured comfortability, both with human and animal subjects. Spending time and care, Banks work reflects the slow indispensable labor of relationship-building.
Rachael Banks, Bev, 2022, Archival Pigment Print, 32” x 24”
Slone’s sculptural objects lay flat, tower over, and block pathways, repositioning invaluable childhood possessions as more than items of nostalgia. In “Now Forever”, a well-loved blanket lies forever cemented above our heads, spilling over a wooden beam that is now a permanent resting place. “This Feeling Is a Place” reflects on a farm gate from Slone's childhood home, placing it in solitude, divorced from its fence and lodged between two concrete slabs. Slone’s sculptures consider the consequences of space, taking on the Sisyphean task of lassoing a time, place, and personhood in constant flux.
Kacey Slone, Now Forever, 2021, Childhood blanket, concrete, wood
In both artists’ work there is an ode to the region, one that spans further than the big cities and the Appalchian 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 within the Ohio River Valley. While place and the communities who come to inhabit it remain integral, “Kith & 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.