The Art Museum of Southeast Texas will exhibit “Emily Peacock: Pure Comedy” and “David McGee: Black Painting”s from Dec. 14 to March 1 in the main galleries.
On Friday, Dec. 13, 6:30-8:30 p.m., AMSET will host a free and open to the public opening reception featuring a gallery talk by artists Emily Peacock and David McGee. Light appetizers and beverages will be provided.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Emily Peacock is currently a professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and lives in Houston. “Emily Peacock: Pure Comedy” transforms the artist’s personal journeys through loss, motherhood, and family tragedy into photographs, film, and sculpture depicting objects and images that exist in a space between the familiar and the absurd. Using safety suits and common objects seen in her home, Peacock presents a series of oval portraits of herself and her husband that feel all at once alien and very familiar to those who have experienced caring for the safety and well-being of another. This series, titled “H.S.A.N.O. (Home Security Apparatuses for Non-desirable Outcomes),” also brings postpartum depression to the forefront, a public health issue that affects 10 to 15 percent of mothers. By fantastically documenting her own transition into motherhood, Peacock allows others to open up about their own experiences without fear or shame, in an attempt to de-stigmatize disorders such as this.
“David McGee: Black Paintings” is an exhibition where the ongoing “Urban Dread” series serves as a visual and symbolic focal point to reconsider paintings spanning twenty six years of the artist’s career. The series depicts black and white 24” x 18” paintings that scroll across the museum walls, their stark black and white minimalism softened and complicated by their surfaces which consist of oil, sand, wax, and mixed medium on burlap. McGee, who was born in Lockhart, Louisiana and currently resides in Houston, addresses “urban dread” as a conflict between inner cities and suburban angst, depicting abstracted images of ropes, cuffs, crosses, targets, police vehicle coloration, hoods, land separation, hospitals, and weapons. These and other paintings present McGee’s most powerful exhibition-to-date, challenging viewers to consider the neighborhoods they live in and pass through, and how color affects each emotion, memory, and human interaction.
AMSET is located at 500 Main St. in downtown Beaumont.
For more information, visit www.amset.org or call 409-832-3432.