Artist collaborative Okay Mountain recently created and installed a site-specific installation on George’s Island – located within the Boston Harbor Islands, a national park off the city’s coast that’s threatened by sea level rise. Produced by the Isles Arts Initiative, the commission is part of a summer long public art series on Georges, Spectacle islands and Boston Sculptors Gallery that will capture the intrinsic beauty of the 34 harbor islands.
Says Art F City:
[On July 11, 2015], “Cove“opens on Georges Island, a decommissioned military fort from 1861. The show features site specific installations by Elizabeth Alexander, Amy Archambault, Damien Hoar de Galvan, Samantha Fields, Pat Falco, Alex Hamrick, Middle Kingdom, !ND!V!DUALS Collective, Elizabeth Keithline, Megan & Murray McMillan, and Okay Mountain.
For their commission, Okay Mountain created Monument to a Decommissioned Monument (2015), in which they reflect on the way historic sites, and even history itself is repurposed. Responding to the revolving reincarnation of George’s Island, from military fort, to prison, to training grounds, to public park, Okay Mountain presents a shrouded heroic figure looking out toward Boston, suggesting a now-defunct past our possibly an as-yet-revealed future. To visit their contribution to the exhibition – and other works on display – please visit the website for Isles Arts Initiative.
Okay Mountain is a nine member artist collective based in Austin, Texas. Formed in 2006 as an artist-run alternative gallery space, the group has exhibited their drawing, video, sound, and performance projects throughout the United States and in Mexico City, and has been widely recognized for its “inventive construction, loving attention to detail and keen-eyed connoisseurship.” Okay Mountain repackages, reconstitutes, and rekindles our consumerist desires with a sardonic edge. Their installations and multi-media assemblage works mimic the stock vernacular of our communal materialism, yet tweak them just enough to reveal our superficial insecurities and convictions.
While most artists are alumni of the University of Texas at Austin (TX), others are graduates of University of California Los Angeles (CA), Rhode Island School of Design (RI), and the University of Kansas (KS). Institutional exhibitions have included those at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (TX), Austin Museum of Art (TX), McNay Art Museum (TX), Arthouse (TX), University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (TN), and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA). Their work is included in the permanent collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (CT), McNay Museum of Art (TX), Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (CA), Santa Barabara Museum of Art (CA), and Vanderbilt University (TN).
Mark Moore Fine Art Blog 