ALLISON
ARKUSH
It Won’t Be Easy
Shows, Written, Video, Sound, Ceramic, Mixed Media, Found Object, MFA Thesis, Germ Unit, NE, Egg Sack, Fence, Festoon
MFA Thesis Show May 2022
As an interdisciplinary and multimedia artist Allison’s practice engages a wide and fluctuating range of materials, modalities, and research. She primarily works within the domains of sculpture and installation, which have increasingly come to include her poetry, as well as audio and video components. Allison’s ever-emergent and evolving personal lexicon of symbols and metaphorical motifs connects and deepens the narratives within her work. These individual symbols are germunits, each representing a single germinated concept/object that has proliferated and taken on new associations and meanings, deeply rooted in and vining through her practice. Her sculptures and installations can function similarly to her poems, but the arrangements are of physical objects and materials rather than language. The germunits act as nouns, materials are the adjectival modifiers, and the assembled sculptures become sentences within the poem. Though this assertion offers some clarity, it belies the complexity of Allison’s conglomerative sculptures. Instead, the works containing multiple germunits, materials, and found objects are object ecosystems. Allison’s thesis exhibition will contain multiple object ecosystem, forming a network or constellation of tableaus within the gallery.
︎ Thesis Abstract
︎ Video & Sound
︎ UNL Digital Commons
︎ Thesis Abstract
︎ Video & Sound
︎ UNL Digital Commons
Well It’s Progress
2021
Well It’s Progress
Week-long solo installation at MEDICI Gallery at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 20-26, 2021
Throughout the week Arkush will continue to alter and evolve the work as she explores the interplay between gallery space, found objects, made elements, video footage, sound, and text.
︎ Statement
︎ Video
︎ Lexicon
Week-long solo installation at MEDICI Gallery at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 20-26, 2021
Throughout the week Arkush will continue to alter and evolve the work as she explores the interplay between gallery space, found objects, made elements, video footage, sound, and text.
︎ Statement
︎ Video
︎ Lexicon
She’s Not Done
Solo installation at MEDICI Gallery at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE (Dec 8-15, 2019)
She’s Not Done: “It’s hard but you can do it,” she tries to convince herself. Tries to push the anxiety that blocks her throat back down into her stomach. Mentally wringing her hands while they write another To Do list. And she’s still in bed, shirt cold with last night’s sweat. What is missing?
When you are a perfectionist there is always something missing. Any praise passes in one ear out the other. While the imagined criticism, the fruitions frustrated, the should- haves... they tattoo themselves inside your eyelids and under your nail beds. No matter how short you bite them they always grow back. And she will always remember the things that didn’t get done. Self compassion is a myth, extinct as the prairie grass.
︎ Statement
Solo installation at MEDICI Gallery at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE (Dec 8-15, 2019)
She’s Not Done: “It’s hard but you can do it,” she tries to convince herself. Tries to push the anxiety that blocks her throat back down into her stomach. Mentally wringing her hands while they write another To Do list. And she’s still in bed, shirt cold with last night’s sweat. What is missing?
When you are a perfectionist there is always something missing. Any praise passes in one ear out the other. While the imagined criticism, the fruitions frustrated, the should- haves... they tattoo themselves inside your eyelids and under your nail beds. No matter how short you bite them they always grow back. And she will always remember the things that didn’t get done. Self compassion is a myth, extinct as the prairie grass.
︎ Statement
