The notion of “Southerness” can seem as slippery as a Bulls Bay oyster, particularly given how culture today is powered more by algorithms than postal codes.
From the styles we sport to the slang we sling, Southern culture is no longer wholly spun from local cloth. Rather than the folksy, loaded “Bless your hearts” or once-ubiquitous seersucker, contemporary life in the South is as often informed by parts unknown rather than by what’s around the corner.
That’s not stopping South Arts.
Even as the region’s defining characteristics morph and shift, the Atlanta-based nonprofit organization shapes its mission around Southerness. The aim is to promote vitality and foster exchange in the region, and to do so by tapping artists spanning the Southeast, from nine states specifically: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
On June 27, the organization’s annual traveling exhibition will return to Charleston, bringing along dozens of new works created by artists recognized by its 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellowships. On view June 27 to Aug. 3 at City Gallery, it opens on June 27, with a free reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Prizing place
Last week, I ducked past surrounding condo construction and into City Gallery. The great uncrating of the show was underway, including some containers sufficiently expansive to nearly defy entrance.
Guided by City Gallery manager Anne Quattlebaum, I traversed haunting photographs by Robyn Moore that offer a new lens on Kentucky. I took in a yet-to-be-installed vast and magical knotted textile work that calls Georgia home, the folk craft-infused creation of Zipporah Camille Thompson.
Each piece comes with bona fides, as the hallmark two-pronged initiative of South Arts recognizes a standout artist from each of its nine affiliated states. Those fellows then compete for the Southern Prize, with $25,000 awarded to the artist whose work demonstrates the highest artistic excellence.
According to Shannon Rae Lindsey, 2024 Southern Prize and State Fellows Exhibition curator, Southern artists use a variety of mediums and processes to express their identity, culture, environment–to build their own constructs or subvert those they have been placed into, historically and today.
“Artists based in the American South, either by origin or relocation, express our identities, experiences, hardships, and joys visually and unapologetically. The nine 2024 South Arts Southern Prize State Fellows for Visual Arts are no exception,” Lindsey said in the exhibition catalog.
Artful engagement
Take this year’s Southern Prize winner: Alabama-based Anthony (Tony) M. Bingham is a multi-disciplinary artist whose evocative pinhole photographic images and light-filtering sculptures explore communities and public space, particularly historic sites of the enslaved, and are created to inspire conversations.
A distinctly Southern feel inhabits numerous works by South Carolina artist Charles Clary. Vintage wallpaper reveals distressed slabs of drywall, under which are meticulously cut, sinuous-seeming paper patterns in an unfolding of childhood trauma.
In a technicolored departure, Louisiana-based artist Macon Reed draws from their experiences in queer, punk and DIY cultures, resulting in an eye-popping, bright profusion of three-dimensional works made from materials such as wood, velvet, cardboard, paper clay and rubber. In an upstairs corner of City Gallery, “These Are Not Fables” features a vibrant blue chandelier resting askew on the floor.
There’s more on view, as well, by artists Nelson Gutierrez of Tennessee, Isys Hennigar of North Carolina, and Brooke P. Alexander of Mississippi.
Throughout, there is a sense of the South, one perhaps fraying like the throwback wallpaper in Clay’s mementos, indigo-tinted as Thompson’s “sculpted shapeshifters.” And it is evident throughout that these artists, our neighbors, are connected still by the region’s complex past, while contending with a fractured present.
The sleek, cool gallery that gathers the works looks out to Charleston Harbor, past the cheerily burbling pineapple fountain emblematic of the city’s much-heralded hospitality — and farther still to a squatting, resolute Fort Sumter. From one crisp white wall to the next, it is clear that it still leaves its mark on this place we call home, printed and woven, painted and carved.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: City Gallery is located at 34 Prioleau St. in downtown Charleston.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.