Elizabeth Mead: Incident(als): objects+things, sculpture+photographs

The exhibition Incident(als): objects + things, sculptures + photographs features work by Virginia artist Elizabeth Mead. Sculptures and photographs occupy spaces simultaneously connected and divided in an installation charged by tensions between actual objects and their photographic representations. The installation underscores the artist’s aesthetic and conceptual interests with paralleled perceptual and tactile experiences. The subjects of Mead’s photographs, her abstract paper and ceramic sculptures, exist as models for the photographs as much as distinct, independent objects. Which one takes precedence: the reality of the physically discernible objects or their photographic reflections observed and framed through otherwise unlikely angles? This is a question that dominates her work. The photographs elevate the experience of the sculptures through unique perspectives and inverted scale. In turn, the sculptures invite a visual engagement that, as in a photograph, is singular and momentary. 

This reciprocal take on images and objects draws attention to seemingly insignificant moments and details. In Mead’s words, “these moments and things are nonheroic, but when we take a moment, we find they can be as intriguing as the monumental. In the end, these incidentals are the things that populate the world around us the most.” Alongside her sculptures and photography, images of other subjects—“things,” as Mead refers to them—carry her observations outside of the studio and illustrate the importance and consequentiality of fleeting experiences.