The New Gallery at Austin Peay presents ‘The Katrina Chronicles’ by Peter Precourt
(Posted Jan. 19, 2021)
The New Gallery, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Department of Art + Design, is pleased to present The Katrina Chronicles, a new exhibition by artist Peter Precourt, to continue an exciting 2020-2021 exhibition season.
“The Katrina Chronicles is a densely narrative exhibition where artist/storyteller Peter Precourt presents a series of personal stories as a way of dealing with his experience of losing most of his possessions and artwork in the devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi,” said Michael Dickins, curator and director of The New Gallery. “The Chronicles are told in a form that hovers somewhere between a graphic novel, a journal entry, a painting, a memoir and a flippant conversation. With this work, Precourt hopes to make images that openly engage the imperfection of memory, the possibility of change and the restorative power of storytelling.”
In Precourt’s words, “The most depressing visual feature of the Mississippi coast, after the immense destruction, was the endless amount of debris. Everything was leveled and spread across the coastal landscape: nails, drywall, toilets, tires, forks, needles … everything that was once in a house or a garage was now scattered all over the ground. Over the past six years, I have struggled to come to terms with a way to tell my experience, which is a single story amongst thousands of stories in the aftermath of Katrina. Ultimately, it made sense to me to tell The Katrina Chronicles in a form that embraces the stepchild nature of Mississippi and the leveling power of Katrina.”
Dickins added, “Since arriving at APSU, I have been interested in curating and exhibiting artists whose artwork is a direct extension of their identity and personal experiences. This exhibition is different in that it is extremely autobiographical, revealing and distinctively linear. The Katrina Chronicles is unpretentiously presented and, through Precourt’s vulnerability and humor, profoundly relatable.”
About the artist
Precourt lives and works in Winthrop, Maine, with wife Jane and teenage children Charlotte and Will. He is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and professor of art at the University of Maine at Augusta where he coordinates the Art Department. He received his MFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2000 and later served as an affiliate artist there. In 2005-2006, he served as head of the painting department at William Carey University in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 2007, he conducted a four-part lecture series at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, concerning art since 1960.
Precourt has an active studio and social art practice. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern Maine, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Reed College, Fort Lewis College, San Jacinto College, Lincoln Memorial University, Kennesaw State University, ArtHouse Center for Contemporary Art, New York University and the University of Lisbon in Portugal. His work has been exhibited in Austin, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Gyeonggi-do, Korea; Houston; Los Angeles; New Orleans, Louisiana; Nashville; New York and Portland, Oregon.
To learn more about Peter Precourt, visit his www.peterprecourt.com.
Exhibition, walk-through, gallery tour
The exhibit opens Tuesday, Jan. 19, at The New Gallery, located in the Art + Design building on the campus of Austin Peay State University, and runs through Feb. 12. A 360-degree virtual walk-through will accompany this exhibition for those who wish to view the work from the safety of their homes. The walk-through can be found on The New Gallery’s webpage and can be accessed via www.apsu.edu/art-design. The virtual walk-through will be integrated with an “artist-led” gallery tour.
An artist lecture with Peter Precourt will be held at 6 p.m. Feb. 3 via Zoom. Register here for this free talk.
Hours for The New Gallery are 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, closed on weekends and holidays, and follows the university’s academic calendar. To maintain social distance measures, a 15-person limit rule will be in effect.
For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu.
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