August 12 - August 25 2016

Katrina del Mar | Bobby Miller | Eileen Myles | Christotpher Tanner | Jay Critchley | Shania LeClaire Riviere

Opening Reception: Friday, August 12, 6-9 pm.

Katrina del Mar

Hell No / Poster Child

Katrina del Mar is a New York-based photographer, video artist, writer, and award-winning film director. Her work has been described as “beautiful”, exuding an “intimate chemistry” and also as “filth of the highest quality.” Katrina herself has been described as a “major league cutie,” “a wild woman,” “the Lesbian Russ Meyer,” and “apparently, the lesbian stepchild of Kenneth Anger.”

Her solo exhibition GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS, first presented at Participant Inc. in New York City, shown at AMP Gallery in the summer season of 2013. Likewise, her solo exhibition Summer Sang in Me, first presented at Strange Loop Gallery in New York City was exhibited at AMP Gallery in 2014. In 2012, Katrina presented a series of films and photographs from the Golden Age of Performance Art (1988-2000) On the Edge of Society: Moments in Live Art, at Warehouse 9, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her solo exhibition, Gangs of New York, was presented in 2010 at Wrong Weather Gallery in Porto, Portugal. Invited to teach at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, she conducted the first ever Queer Trash Feminist Film Workshop, also in 2010. Katrina has shown her critically acclaimed Girl Gang Trilogy of films internationally, including venues such as the Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France, the Fringe Film Festival, London, UK, 2012; Nightingale Cinema, co-presented by Chicago Underground Film Festival, the MoMA Dome 2 in Rockaway Beach, and Bio Paradis, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Katrina’s work has garnered numerous awards including a fellowship in video from the New York Foundation for the Arts, “Best Experimental Film” from the Planet Out Short Movie Awards announced at the Sundance Film Festival, the 2010 Accolade Award of Merit, and Winner of Juried Competition, Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2012.

Katrina is currently producing a “non-linear, semi surreal” documentary-style web series called DelMarvelous: A Day in the Life, Katrina del Mar, which will be screened at AMP during this year's Provincetown International Film Festival.

"Katrina del Mar is perhaps best known for her decades-long work in video and photography, chronicling the reality and illusion of her Lower East Side friends and lovers as punk heroines; or within her girl gang movie world of strictly female population. Creating a family tree indebted equally to B-movies and diaristic photography, del Mar’s defiantly queer photographs and videos are iconic alternatives to the cultural status quo, offering an exuberant, hyper-stylized sexuality, an unapologetic feminist voice, and often guerilla-style production tactics." -Participant Inc.

Bobby Miller

Downtown State of Mind: NYC 1973 - 1983

“These photographs represent a time period in New York City that changed the way I thought. The people in these photographs set standards for many social changes that were to come; changing styles in fashion, art and music, and setting a pattern for a future that no one saw coming. Many of these people went on to have great careers and success. Many others disappeared into the abyss. I want to thank them all for their commitment to the time, and for the daring and bold expressions that they became known for. Without many of these people there would have been no alternative scene, and I for one would have died of boredom.”

Bobby Miller is a performance poet, writer, actor and photographer. He is the author of four books of poetry; "Benestrific Blonde", "Mouth of Jane", ”Troubleblonde” and "Rigamarole". He has been published in many magazines and periodicals including Verbal Abuse, Vice Magazine, UHF Magazine and The Village Voice. He is included in The 1995 American Book Award- winning "Aloud: Voices from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe", "Verses That Hurt; Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, and “The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry”, listed on the top ten Poetry National Bestseller List. Mr. Miller’s book, "Fabulous! A Photographic Diary Of Studio 54" 144 black and white photographs with text was published by St. Martin's Press in September 1998, He is also the author “A Downtown State of Mind: NYC 1973 – 1983”, “Wigstock in Black & White: 1985 – 2005”, “Jackie 60 Nights”, “Amina”, “Queer Nation”, “PORTRAITS: Volumes 1 – 3”, ”Ptown Peeps” Volumes 1 , 2 and 3, “Forget Them Not”, ”Fetish and Fairytale Folk”, “Diva’s, Dudes & Dandies”, and “Fabulous! A Photographic Diary of Studio 54: REDUX” with 37 color plates added for the 37th Anniversary of Studio 54. All of his books can be purchased at www.blurb.com/user/store/TroubleBlond.

His is work has been exhibited in NYC, Palm Springs and Provincetown at AMP Gallery, Patty DeLuca Gallery, and Woodman Shimko Gallery. Bobby has been taking photographs since 1974. His first influence was his mother Dorothy C. Miller, a prolific amateur photographer. His first contemporary influences were Christopher Makos, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jimmy De Sana. He studied photography with Lisette Model in 1976 in NYC at The New School during the last year of her life. As a hairdresser and make-up artist he has worked with photographers Lynn Goldsmith, Francesco Scavullo and Robert Mapplethorpe and many others.

As a poet and spoken word artist he has collaborated with recording artist DJ Dmitry of the band Dee-Lite on a recording of “My Life as I Remember It to Be” released in 2015 and can also be heard on Epic Records CD Home Alive with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Joan Jett, and others performing his “Keep Your Mouth Off My Sisters”.

He has performed his original material at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian Institute, New York University, Westminster College, The Rhode Island School of Design, Bennington College, The American Crafts Museum, The New York Historical Society, The Massachusetts State Poetry Festival, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The CMJ Music Festivals, Jackie 60/Mother/ NYC, ARO.SPACE/Seattle, The Kitchen, LaMama etc., Dixon Place, P.S.122, Fez, and The Downtown Arts Festivals in lower Manhattan. He was also a winner in The National Poetry Slam as a member of The Nuyorican Poets and has performed internationally with poet John Giorno and alone at venues including The Tabernacle, The Battersee Arts Center and The ICA in London and The Glasgow Center for The Arts in Glasgow, Scotland. He has been seen on television on the PBS program City Arts and the BBC/PBS produced program The Clive James Hour. Mr. Miller also curated and hosted Verbal Abuse, a spoken word evening, the first Sunday of each month at Mother Nightclub in New York City.

Mr. Miller is also the recipient of a Jackie 60 Lifetime Achievement Award, four Jackie 60 Awards and a NYC Glammy Award. As an actor he has been seen in Forty Deuce and Theatre Couture's The Bad Weed '73 and The Final Feast of Lucrezia Borgia. He is also the author and star of his one man show Bobby Miller, Bobby Miller with runs during Gay Pride month at Here Arts Center/ NYC 1998, 1999 and a 2000 run in Provincetown Massachusetts at The UU Theater. Mr. Miller makes his home in Provincetown.

Eileen Myles

Notes & Regrets

“I write poems but these are writing too. These are addresses and measure things and remind me to do things that I do sometimes, and other times the note sticks around so long it’s embarrassing. They are sort of a family of messages on post-its, index cards, torn corners of legal paper (yellow) and envelopes too. It’s a thing. I’m volunteering to bring my materials to the gallery for short periods of time during the run of the show to write a note for you, or record a regret.”

Eileen Myles is the author of nineteen books including I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems, and a 2015 reissue of Chelsea Girls. In 2017 Grove Press will publish Afterglow (a memoir) about Myles’s late pitbull, Rosie, a one time Provincetown resident. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. In 2016 they received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. They’ve had work included in the past in shows at Southern Exposure (SF) David Zwirner, and most recently The Artist’s Institute (NYC) exhibited Myles’s 1992 campaign materials. Myles has showed their work several times in Provincetown at AMP and Schoolhouse Gallery where they will be exhibiting work in August. Myles teaches at NYU and Naropa University and lives in Marfa, TX and New York.

Christopher Tanner

A Flower is a Lovesome Thing

“I get my inspiration from many places — light and sparkle, longing, The Golden Age of Hollywood, films, glamour, gay history, burlesque history, war, and seduction are all very close to me. I love to find the beauty in the grotesque, the light in the dark, order in chaos, and to share that experience with my audience. I enjoy having a constant dialog with my art, both physically and mentally. When passing in front of one of my glitter pieces, the light continues to move and change bringing new vitality to the work while also keeping my environment alive.

Collecting materials that are precious and have a sense of historical context is very exciting for me. I encourage my audience, and myself to make a journey of discovery with the work I create. I am always looking to uncover secrets from the past, present and future. I find I am most successful when I am truly relaxed, working with no agenda, and in the zone. It’s then that the magic comes.”

Christopher Tanner attended the San Francisco Academy of Art, and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1978. In 2008 he was Artist in Residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. Over the years he has had numerous solo national exhibitions, recently including: 2015, “Eye of the Heart”, La MaMa Galleria, NYC; 2013, “Treasure”, Smart Clothes Gallery, NYC; 2010, “The Queen of Hell & the Horn of Plenty”, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NYC; 2008, “Give Me the Cobra Jewel”, Atrium Gallery, St. Louis, MO; “Off the Yellow Brick Cliff: Paintings, Drawings & Collages”, Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; 2007, “How High the Moon”, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NYC; 2005, “Ravaged by Romance”, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NYC; 2004, “Christopher Tanner”, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO. He has also participated in many group shows both nationally and internationally.

As a performing artist Tanner has worked with Cyndi Lauper, Penny Arcade, Everett Quinton, Bloolips, Mabou Mines, The Wooster Group, David Lynch, Karen Finley, and The New Stage Theatre Company.

“Christopher Tanner—also a set designer, actor and downtown cabaret singer in drag—that old modernist dictum “less is more” has rarely carried much weight. Rather, his motivating mantra has long been “more is more.” Over the years, Tanner’s aesthetic outlook and art-making efforts have focused on the value of meticulous craftsmanship, the meaning and nature of glamour, and an unabashed celebration of beauty. More recently, the artist has said, he’s become interested in “succulence, abundance, bounty and the life force that flows through nature and the human body.” Best known for spectacular, mixed-medium “paintings”—luxurious, canvas-mounted assemblages of such humble materials as big shiny sequins, colored sand, shells, stones and fabric scraps—Tanner is also a capable draftsman who routinely draws from live models, and sinuous lines derived from his drawings often make their way into his compositions in other mediums. Lately, Tanner has taken a break from his brightly colored, thickly encrusted paintings, experimenting instead with more pointedly three-dimensional, wall-mounted and freestanding sculptures.” — Edward M. Gómez, Art in America

Jay Critchley

Sand Drawings

“Sand is basic to Uncle Jay. It is the non-bedrock of the Cape tip. It molds to the contours of our feet and creates a crunching sound when we walk in it that stimulates the frontal lobe of our brains that triggers endorphins and permeates vitality throughout the body. Crrrrruuuuunnnnnccccchhhhh. This holistic experience also stimulates our desire for crunchy foods, not just granola but carrots, beets, apples, rhubarb and the raw onion family — an acquired taste like beer, but guaranteed to sensitize and enhance the symbiotic connection between our olfactory and salivary glands.

This spiral spit of sand is a disorienting place. Our internal compass goes haywire here as we attempt to find our bearings on the constantly shape shifting sands of the dunes upon which we dwell. North becomes south, east becomes west. Do most westerners even think about their bearings in relation to the ground, untouched, insulated by concrete and asphalt? How hard is that? Our bowed heads follow our GPS dutifully, but do we look at the ground? There’s no give to your body, to your bones. After a while they start to creek and rub and grate against each other, sending signals to the brain that life is hard, your body is inadequate, you need a tonic, a bracer, a crutch to cope with it all. A hip replacement.” — Excerpt from “Uncle Jay”, a fictional memoir

Jay Critchley is a conceptual and multi-media artist and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany and Columbia. He founded the controversial patriotic Old Glory Condom Corporation and was recently featured in Sculpture magazine. His 2011 show in Chelsea, NYC received key reviews in the New York Times, The New Yorker and the Village Voice. He created the inspired “Ten Days That Shook the World” in 2012 before the demolition of the 1953 Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse.

Jay’s movie, “Toilet Treatments”, won an HBO Award at Provincetown Film Festival in 2002, where he was featured last year in conjunction with his survey show at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum, “Jay Critchley, Incorporated”. The show recently traveled to Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

He has taught at the Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston, and has had artist residencies at: Harvard University; AS220, Rhode Island; Harvestworks, NYC; Williams College, MA; Real Art Ways, Hartford; Milepost 5, Portland, OR; Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; and CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France.

Jay was honored in 2012 by the Massachusetts State Legislature as an artist and director of the Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, raising $4M for AIDS and women’s health. His one act experimental musical, “Planet Snowvio”, about the meeting of Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was recently read at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Shania LeClaire Riviere

Beauty of Being Broken

“In the spring of 2014, space was limited with little room to make art in conventional ways. I didn’t have the funds to rent a studio, so I decided the next logical thing would be to dive into the cyber world and see what I could create. During the winter months of 2015, a blizzard a week often left us housebound. At this point I was getting a bit discouraged by my life – feeling a bit broken, not to mention a bit “broke”. Thus the “Beauty of Being Broken” was born.

Shania LeClaire Riviere was born and raised in the South. He left home in his twenties to travel the world and work on a cruise ship. Ultimately, he landed in New York City where he settled for ten years and began exploring his creative process by donning drag. He was inspired by such creative forces as The Cockettes and performance artist Leigh Bowery. From New York City he migrated to Provincetown, and it was here that he made a commitment to bring his unique style of drag into the Fine Art world.

His first painting show in 2009, called “There is no Shane, Only Shania”, represented a year’s worth of self-portraits in drag that he recreated as abstract paintings. In 2010 he shot “18 Ghosts”, a short black-and-white silent film as Shania. In 2011 one of his paintings, “Gender Bent” was featured in Australian Vogue Living and was selected for an exhibit and show presented by "Tree" at the Charles Lahti Studio in Brooklyn. In 2012, Shania was featured in the film trailer for the Independent film, “Spiral” and made the move to Los Angeles where he launched his creative brand, “Maid by Shania” and finished his first photography/video project entitled, “Bus Talk”.

In 2013 he returned to his creative center, Provincetown, and completed his second photography project, “Out the Window”, which was published as a coffee table book by the same name. In 2015 AMP Gallery celebrated this body of work in a group show. Last year saw the launch of #ARTONSHANIA, a drag fusion walking art installation presented during the Provincetown Friday Gallery strolls. This work garnered a great deal of praise and Shania was featured in a variety of magazines, including two cover stories in Provincetown Magazine and Et Alors?, an international magazine focused on documenting contemporary queer and LGBT art. Most recently, Shania has created a series of digital drawings from his photography series, “Strangers” entitled “My Weekend in Provincetown” and “Beauty of Being Broken”, a series of abstracts inspired by photographs of Shania. He has shown and sold a variety of work at PAAM, Fine Arts Work Center, Patty DeLuca Gallery, Charles Lahti Studio, and AMP Gallery.