CATHY MCCLURE UNEARTH
TRAVER GALLERY SEPTEMBER 7–30, 2023
We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Cathy McClure to Traver Gallery for her first solo exhibition, Unearth A self-proclaimed anti-disciplinarian, McClure works with materials and techniques in radically unconventional ways. With a strong background in metal design and propelled by a boundless curiosity, she explores materials, spaces, and processes that push the boundaries of what art can be. McClure’s enthusiastic approach toward inventive methodologies raises questions about what is considered valuable. Her sculptures and installations investigate the discrepancy between past perceptions of an imagined utopic techno-future and the realities of the world we now inhabit.
For this exhibition, McClure uses discarded battery-operated stuffed toys and transforms them into unique gem-like small-scale sculptures that she calls “Bots” and “Mutants.” Although bursting with bubbly personalities, these anthropomorphic creatures tell a story about our societal penchant for instant gratification, over-production, and chronic excessive consumption. Stripped of their stuffing, McClure exposes their innards, preserving the components that once gave these toys their unique movements and sounds. She then recasts elements of the limbs and armatures in precious metals and reassembles the parts in a Frankensteinian manner. The resulting reincarnations exude charm and invite contemplation, drawing upon a collective nostalgia for a past we’ve enthusiastically discarded.
These precious sculptures, part historical and part figurative, like archaeological artifacts, are vessels holding a multitude of memories, each one carrying a hidden history and a reimagined future.
