In their video work, Exchange, 2007, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry literally exchange blood to explore the mythology surrounding the "one drop rule." Exhibition photo by Jonathan Bouknight.
Someone searching for information about Brooklyn-based artists Bradley McCallum and Jaqueline Tarry could spend hours surfing through countless articles and still not see the full picture. In preparation for their exhibition Evenly Yoked at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, opening Thursday, September 9, from 6-8PM, the college’s electronic newsletter attempts a quick summary: “Describing their art as a reflection of issues revolving around marginalized members of society, the interracial couple’s audacious and frank presentation offers an opportunity for discussion on race relations in the United States.”
Although these racially charged ideas are certainly a part of the artists’ message, the art also has value because of the couple’s clean fine-art presentation, their ability to use video and a variety of digital and traditional media, and their tender expressionistic storytelling.
The following is less a preview and more a short primer of what McCallum and Tarry have accomplished in Atlanta before today.
The most extensive illustrated account is the labor of photographer Jonathan Bouknight. Bouknight’s Local Epherema was a tremendous resource that sought to preserve the work of Atlanta artists by going out, every week, and documenting exhibitions through the camera’s lens. Even though the project has ended, Local Ephemera still has the best images of McCallum and Tarry’s shows at Kiang Gallery through May of 2008, when the husband-and-wife duo announced that Atlanta Celebrates Photography had commissioned them to create a unique work of public art titled Within Our Gates, a multimedia project housed inside an abandoned water tower in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward.
I recommend clicking through in reverse order: Jonathan Bouknight’s “Between Knowing and Remembering, Part III,” “Between Knowing and Remembering, Part II,” and “Between Knowing and Remembering, Part I.” Part III ends with a list of several interlocking posts worth browsing.
(The video referenced in Bouknight’s photo at the top of this article is called Exchange. Click here for the entry on the artists’ website.)
Click here to read BURNAWAY’s coverage of Within Our Gates, a multiple-writer discussion conducted during the first month after our official site launch in October of 2008.
Click here to read my full-length review of Within Our Gates published two years ago in Art Voices magazine.
Click here to read Joyce Youmans’s review of Evidence of Things Not Seen at Prospect.1 in New Orleans.
Otherwise, I would simply recommend reading this year’s review in the Washington Post describing their mid-career retrospective at Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum. The exhibition at Spelman College will present ten works from that show.
