ambits: The Greene Fellowship Exhibition
On display December 9, 2023–January 14, 2024.
Curated by Richard Torchia, artist and independent curator.
About ambits
This inaugural Greene Fellowship exhibition features the work of the first three fellows: Chelsea Kaiah, Laura Shill, and Max Maddox.
The works in this exhibition enact critical forms of testing the limits of cultural traditions, the public commons, and bodily contact.
Despite their apparent incongruity, these recent projects by the three inaugural Greene Fellows share a concern for how such boundaries can be questioned while also proposing unexpected forms of engagement.
The word "ambit," which means "the scope, extent, or bounds of something," offers itself as a flexible term that also references the degree of a statute or regulation as well the sphere of influence and authority of an agency, topics that surfaced consistently in my studio conversations with Kaiah, Maddox, and Shill.
The term also brings with it a sense of "span" or "reach," words which imply the measured presence of a performing body. Equally important as another unifying principle is each artist's use of distinctive materials and cultivated processes that help to establish the specific parameters of their quiet transgressions.
The exhibition is curated by Richard Torchia, former Director of Arcadia Exhibitions at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa.
About the Artists
Chelsea Kaiah
Chelsea Kaiah (b. 1995) (2022-2024 RedLine Resident Artist) is Ute and Apache/ Irish settler, born on the Northern Ute reservation. As an artist she currently resides in Denver Colorado. She is a passionate activist for Native rights, awareness, and sustainability. Chelsea earned her BFA at Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville Tennessee.
Today, she learns traditional practices of pine needle weaving, beading, porcupine quilling, buffalo hunting, and hide work, incorporating her interdisciplinary skills to meld a perspective of culture and artistic practice.
For Kaiah, storytelling has always been an integral part of her up-bringing. Storytelling is a connection to her relations, community, past, and hopes for future. Even objects (hide bags) that just carry belongings become cultural carriers that bring knowledge by creation, and carriers of visual storytelling.
Max Maddox
Max Maddox is an installation artist and public interventionist working with found and otherwise procured objects.
Pairing his work with drawing and photography, Maddox has exhibited his work in galleries that include the Redline Contemporary Art Center (Denver), where he was resident artist from 2020-2022, The Art Gym (Denver), Hillyer Art Space (Washington D.C), Locallective (Chicago), the Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), the Print Center of Philadelphia, The Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum (Philadelphia), and Abecedarian Gallery (Denver).
Laura Shill
Laura Shill’s work is a combination of sculpture, installation, performance, and photography. Her work addresses ideas of disclosure and concealment, agency and emotional risk, desire and discontent, oscillating between humor and heartbreak.
Laura Shill has exhibited work nationally and internationally as a Black Cube Nomadic Museum Fellow at the 57th Venice Biennale European Cultural Center as an official satellite, The Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, and Durden and Ray, Los Angeles. Images from her Hidden Mother archive were included in the 2013 Photographers’ Gallery London exhibition, Home Truths, Photography and Motherhood. For her 2016 solo exhibition, Phantom Touch, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Shill developed a community-based barter system for artistic labor and production to realize an ambitiously soft environment.
About the Curator
Richard Torchia is an artist and independent curator. Between 1997 and 2023 he directed the exhibition program at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Prior to his work at Arcadia, he directed City Without Walls, New Jersey's oldest not-for-profit artist-run gallery, and served as the inaugural curator of the Levy Gallery for the Arts in Philadelphia at Moore College of Art & Design.
At Arcadia he organized solo exhibitions and projects for artists such as Ai Weiwei, Polly Apfelbaum, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Quentin Morris, and Kay Rosen along with numerous thematic group exhibitions exploring topics such as the juvenile drawings of contemporary artists and books designed by writers.
Since 2017, he has overseen the archive of writer and artist Pati Hill currently housed at the University. In addition to independent writing and publishing projects, including a comprehensive index of Philadelphia-based artist-run spaces, Torchia has maintained an artistic practice employing optical devices.
About The Greene Fellowship
Founded by Hannah Agosta and Alexander Blume, The Greene Fellowship was launched in 2022 to honor the memory of Hannah Agosta's partner Brad Greene who supported her creative career.
This Fellowship provides an unrestricted award, studio visits and professional development support to career-oriented artists as they strive towards financial security and sustainability.
Support
The Greene Fellowship was made possible by the generous support of Alexander S. Blume, and was administered by RedLine Contemporary Art Center.
