PUBLIC DISCUSSION

Alchemies: form, figure, and archive presents Kim Dacres, Bev Grant, and Veronica Ryan in conversation about their respective cultural practices which engage the use of formal and documentary strategies to express narratives of migration, activism, and sustainability. The discussion will examine Dacres, Grant, and Ryan’s distinct modes of representation and social engagement, each one rich with complexity in terms of their process and aesthetic output.

PARTICIPANT BIOS:

Kim Dacres: Kim Dacres is a first-generation American sculptor of Jamaican descent, who uses found tires and rubber from automobiles and bicycles to create sculptures inspired by people and ideas. The core of Dacres’ process involves collecting, wrapping, reassembling, and disassembling tires; eventually treating these materials with spray paint or enamel. Her sculptures are held together using screws and braiding techniques. In this process of material layering, the rubber is transformed into abstract shapes, evoking muscle, bone, skin, and hair.

Fascinated by the complexities of varied personalities in her community, and the fragments of experience that tend to shape perception, Kim is committed to an ongoing practice of representing everyday people of color—exploring the paradigm of entitlement to space, honorifics and monuments.

Veronica Ryan: Veronica Ryan OBE (b. 1956, Plymouth, Montserrat) has engaged with issues of history, identity, dislocation, and belonging throughout her career. In meticulously handcrafted works composed of materials that reference her Afro-Caribbean heritage and upbringing in the U.K., Ryan examines the psychology and semantics of perception, and experiences of place, home, memory, and loss. Ryan’s first one-person exhibition was at Arnolfini, Bristol in 1987. Other important one-person shows have been presented at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (1988); Camden Arts Centre (1995); Aldrich Museum (1996); Salena Gallery, Brooklyn (2005); Tate St Ives (2000, 2005 and 2017); The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2011); The Art House, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England (2017); and Spike Island, Bristol (2021). In 2021, a sculpture by Ryan honoring the Windrush Generation was unveiled outside Hackney Town Hall in London. Her work is in public collections including the Arts Council Collection, Contemporary Art Society, Sainsbury’s Collection, Tate Collection, The Hepworth Wakefield, and the Weltkunst Collection at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Ryan currently lives and works in both New York and the U.K.

Bev Grant: Bev Grant (born 1942) grew up in Portland, Oregon and moved to New York City in the 1960s. She was radicalized through the Anti-War Movement and became involved in the Women's Movement and the Civil Rights Movement as an activist, musician, and photographer. Much of Bev Grant's photography documents her involvement with New York Radical Women, featuring political activism and consciousness raising events from1968 until 1972, when she began to focus more on her music. Her exceptional oeuvre, brought together for the first time in Bev Grant Photography 1968 to 1972 published by OSMOS Books, includes photographs of the Black Panther Free Breakfast Program, the Jeanette Rankin Brigade March on Washington, the Miss America Protest, W.I.T.C.H. Hex on Wall Street, the Fillmore East Takeover, the Poor People's Campaign, GIs Against the War, and the Young Lords Garbage Offensive. Grant began taking photographs as part of her participation in demonstrations with the Women’s Movement, and then, as a member of the film collective New York Newsreel, she gained access to spaces and groups including the Young Lords Party, the Black Panther Party and the Poor People's Campaign.

Moderated by:

Sara Reisman is a curator, writer, and educator based in New York City where she is Chief Curator and Director of National Academician Affairs at the National Academy of Design. From 2014 to 2021 she served as Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, where she led the foundation’s art and social justice grantmaking initiative, curated more than a dozen thematic exhibitions, and edited multiple publications. From 2008 to 2014, Reisman was Director of New York City’s Percent for Art program at the Department of Cultural Affairs, where she managed more than 100 permanent public art commissions across the five boroughs. She has curated exhibitions for the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery, Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, Queens Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cooper Union School of Art, Philadelphia ICA, Momenta Art, Smack Mellon, and LaMaMa Galleria, among other venues. Reisman has taught at UPenn, SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design, and, since 2016, serves on the faculty at SVA's Curatorial Practice Masters Program. She has been awarded residencies by Art Omi, the Foundation for a Civil Society, Artis, CEC Artslink, Futura, and the Montello Foundation. She received her BA at the University of Chicago and was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.