pergola
NEWBURGH COMMUNITY LAND BANK
ARTIST IN VACANCY
sylvia hardy
the pergola, downing park
haible way, newburgh ny
12pm - sunset // sat 9/11 & sun 9/12 2018
pergola
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 11, 4–8pm, The Pergola, Downing Park
Part I
August 11–12, 2018
Haible Way, Newburgh, New York
Part II
August 13–September 30, 2018
17 Spring Street, Newburgh, New York
Pergola is a site-specific exhibition in two parts by the artist Sylvia Hardy. Pergola will be open to the public at the pergola in Downing Park on Saturday, August 11th and Sunday, August 12th from 12pm to sunset. The exhibition will then move to 17 Spring Street and be on view by appointment from August 13th through September 30th, 2018.
Pergola borrows its name from a pavilion in Downing Park in the city of Newburgh, New York. Designed by Frank E. Estabrook (1860–1918), the park’s pergola has offered panoramic views of the Hudson River Valley since its construction atop the foundation of a former farmhouse and smallpox sanatorium in 1908. This eroding structure will serve as the central subject and setting for an installation of palm-sized photographic prints on aluminum that combine personal and historical material gathered from Newburgh residents.
Emphasizing its state as both an architectural object and viewpoint, Hardy re-presents the pergola as a site of converging perspectives. A sense of simultaneous framing and being framed is further heightened by the intimate scale and materiality of the metallic prints, which make clear reference to smartphones but also to 19th century portable daguerreotypes—photographic images originally captured on sheets of silver-plated copper with mercury vapor. The second part of Pergola will consist of an installation of the same work within a repurposed garage on Spring Street in downtown Newburgh. Transposed into a different setting, the pieces will merge pastoral and industrial scenes of the city in their reflective surfaces.
Pergola is organized by González González in collaboration with Diana Mangaser.
To schedule an appointment, please email dmangaser@newburghcommunitylandbank.org
download a copy of the press release and the exhibition supplement
sylvia hardy
sylvia hardy
Sylvia Hardy is an artist whose work looks at the physicality of site and the physicality of photography. Born in Missouri, she has lived and worked in New York and California. Sylvia studied art and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and received an MFA from Parsons, The New School for Design, New York. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York, USA; Queens Museum, New York, USA; Sydhavnen Station, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Spazio Morris, Milan, Italy. She collaborated with Triple Canopy on a publication in 2013 and is a Danish Arts Council grant recipient.
