The new gallery presents ‘One More River’ by Friday to continue exhibition season
(Posted on Friday, Sept. 23)
The New Gallery, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Department of Art + Design, continues the 2022-23 exhibition season with One More River, a solo exhibition by Miami-based artist Friday.
“I am excited to introduce the work of Chris Friday – or just Friday – to the Austin Peay and Clarksville community,” said Michael Dickins, director of The New Gallery. “Friday creates drawings of figures at rest or doing mundane leisure activities, but on a larger-than-life scale. It’s the scale of the drawings, one close to 20 feet long, that draws in the viewer and enhances the importance, and desire, of leisure and rest – but with their backs turned toward the viewers – forcing the viewer to become a bystander and witness to this leisure – not a participant. The exhibition title, One More River, refers to the song One More River to Cross by Sam Cooke. With this exhibition, Friday, as a Black woman, asks the question, ‘When is that last river coming, because I’m tired?”
In the exhibition essay, written specifically for this exhibition by Joe Tolbert Jr., he writes: “Set against the backdrop of the artist’s experience of 2020, family archives and history collide in Chris Friday’s new exhibition, One More River. With this exhibition, Friday invites us into her freedom dream of rest for Black people in the United States.
Tolbert continues: “One more river to cross. One more mountain to climb. One more valley I gotta go through then I’m leaving my troubles behind.” The chorus of the song from which this exhibition gets its title sets up a problem for Black people. Friday shared, ‘It’s this idea, especially in the Black community that, ‘Oh, don’t worry about the here and now, cause when we die, we will get this eternal rest.’ I’m fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that we’re not allowed to have that right now.’”
The exhibit opens on Monday, Sept. 26, and runs through Oct. 28 at The New Gallery in the Art + Design building on the campus of Austin Peay State University.
There are several events associated with this exhibition:
- Friday will present an artist lecture on her work and creative practice on Sept. 27 at 6 p.m. in Room 120 of the Art + Design building.
- A reception and gallery talk with Friday and a special guest – spoken-word artist Arsimmer McCoy – will be in The New Gallery on Sept. 28 beginning at noon.
- This exhibition will be open during Clarksville’s First Thursday Art Walk on Oct. 6 from 5-7:30 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public.
A virtual tour of the exhibition will be available soon at www.apsu.edu/art-design/thenewgallery.
Hours for The New Gallery are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., closed on weekends and holidays, and follow the university’s academic calendar. For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu.
About the Artist
Friday is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, Florida. Her work offers itself as both a contemplative reflection of and counternarrative to the pervasive under/misrepresentations of Blackness in mainstream media and popular culture.
Often incorporating a black and white “Chalkboard” aesthetic, which plays on concepts of learning and teaching, Friday identifies problematic perspectives and their origins, questions their legitimacy and offers possible solutions in her work.
Friday has exhibited extensively in her hometown of Miami, Florida, nationally and internationally. Most notably, her work was included as a part of “The Cartography Project” presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (2022), “Black Thought Anthology” curated by Octavia Yearwood and presented by Spinello Projects in Miami, Florida, (2020) and “#WhoOwnsBlackArt?” presented by Zeal Press at Muce 305, in Miami, Florida (2019).
Friday received a “The Ellies” Creator award from Oolite Arts (2021), The GMBCV People’s Choice award for her work in Miami Beach’s No Vacancy juried art show (2021) and residencies with Anderson Ranch Arts Center (2022), and the Visual Arts Residency at Chautauqua Institute (2019).
Friday is a resident studio artist at Oolite Arts in Miami, Florida, and an adjunct professor at the New World School of the Arts.
You can learn more about her work at www.chrisfriday.art.
