VCU news

“Transformer,” an exhibit at the VCUarts Anderson Gallery this summer, showcases the work of artists who employ alter egos to address issues of role-playing, racial and cultural stereotypes and gender identity.

The exhibit opens Friday with a reception from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will be on view until Aug. 11. Summer hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public. For more details, call 804-828-1522 or visit the gallery’s Web site.

Amy Moorefield, assistant director and curator of collections for the Anderson Gallery, curated the “Transformer” exhibit. The theme for the exhibit was inspired by Moorefield’s observations of how her two young children reveled in playing dress up and assuming different personalities “to transform themselves.” She subsequently developed an exhibit that would demonstrate some of the ways artists utilize alter egos and other transformative means to create their works.

“Who wouldn’t like to be someone else sometimes?” Moorefield wrote in an introduction to the exhibit. “Identity and transformation are core components in contemporary art making and have a long tradition in literature, art and pop culture.”

FEAST, a Richmond-based collective of six artists (Terral Bolton, Terry Brown, Sherry Griffin, Stephanie Lundy, C.J. Hawn, Chris Norris), created a new installation for the exhibit called “FEAST HEARTS MEXICO.” The extensive piece, which occupies the first floor of the Anderson Gallery, celebrates an idealized Mexico through festive decorations and accessories and a series of largely humorous photographs that depict the members of FEAST as a traveling mariachi band.

Mark Newport, an Arizona artist, contributed his hand-knit acrylic re-inventions of superheroes’ costumes to the exhibit. The life-sized costumes hang on the second floor near a baby quilt that uses the pages of superhero comics, some manipulated digital prints of performance pieces related to the knit costumes and a video of the artist knitting himself into one of his costumes.

McCallum and Tarry, the New York performance artists, offer their piece, “Cut,” a video and photographs influenced by the post-World War II public shearing of Nazi collaborators. The video shows Bradley McCallum, a VCU sculpture alumnus, and his wife, Jacqueline Tarry, methodically cutting off each other’s hair. The photographs show the artists after the cut.

Annie Schap, also from New York, has two video works showing in “Transformer.” In “Me Time,” Schap acts out both roles from a memorable discussion between a teenager and parent in the film, “Parenthood.” Also, in “All Out of Love,” Schap transforms a cut in her thumb into a mouth that “lip-synchs” along to a song from the 1980’s pop band Air Supply.