Tags: art

Earlier this month, Freshkills Park returned to the annual NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) New York Art Fair as a cultural partner alongside over 100 other exhibitors hailing from 19 countries. The fair, held March 8-11, brought together emerging galleries, artists, and projects at Skylight Clarkson Square in West SoHo.

“The Fantastic Voyage”
On view January 21 – June 8, 2018
2240 Richmond Avenue, Staten Island, NY

Stefani Bardin and Assaf Tamir’s “The Fantastic Voyage” is an immersive installation exploring the role of food production in our personal health and the health of the environment.

In November of 2017, Freshkills Park celebrated the groundbreaking at North Park. The event signaled the start of construction on the 21-acre project, which will be the first section inside the Fresh Kills Landfill boundaries to become public parkland. This milestone was possible thanks in part to the growing community that is engaging with the project and participating in scheduled programs. 

It’s Happening! Celebrating 50 Years of Public Art in NYC Parks, took place in Central Park on October 21^st. Included among the more than 100 artworks, performances, and workshops was FieldWork. FieldWork is a choreographed performance by artist Nancy Nowacek, a Freshkills Park Field R/D artist, in collaboration with Morgan Hille-Refakis.

Back in June, artist Volker Goetze performed at Freshkills Park as part of Make Music New York for “Inside the Bird Chorus,” a live, free musical celebration with over 1,200 concerts on streets, sidewalks, and parks across the five boroughs.

Artist Mandi Gavois’ solo show of photographs and sculpture at Galleri Thomas Wallner in Simris, Sweden, includes photographs of Freshkills Park. The show’s central panorama photograph of Freshkills is titled “With the ship comes the wreck,” which is also the title of the show.

Contemporary artists have found a new way to recycle discarded objects by transforming them into beautiful artwork. This unconventional technique has proven to be wildly popular and it echoes the Freshkills Park message that trash can be transformed into something beautiful.

Artists are participating in a new art-research project called “Freshkills Park: Field R/D.” Organized by artist/curator Dylan Gauthier and Freshkills Park’s Mariel Villeré, the project will involve independent and collaborative research, site visits and field trips, shared meals and conversations over the course of several months.

Since 2014, photographers have been documenting Freshkills Park’s changing landscape for an ongoing series called Capturing Change. The series aims to generate a community- and artist-driven archive of the site’s transition from landfill to public space. Several photographers have returned multiple times, compelled to explore the park over and over again.

In June 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation requiring the City to produce its first-ever comprehensive cultural plan for all New Yorkers. Now the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and Hester Street Collaborative are working together to collect information to inform the cultural plan, called CreateNYC.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles first toured Fresh Kills Landfill in 1977. She had just been appointed the New York Department of Sanitation’s first (and only) Artist-in-Residence. At that time, there were landfills in every borough except Manhattan, and Fresh Kills was known as the largest municipal landfill in the world.

This past year marked the fifteen-year anniversary of the Fresh Kills Landfill closure. In March of 2001, the final barge of household garbage arrived at the landfill. Later that year, the City of New York announced an international design competition for the development of a plan for Freshkills Park.

Freshkills Park: Landscape in Motion was on view at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge Gallery in the St. George Ferry Terminal from September 22-December 7. This exhibit of winning photographs of Freshkills Park was the capstone to “A Fresh Look,” the landscape photography contest organized with the Staten Island Advance.

Dear Friends:

This year’s $30 million funding for the Mayor’s Anchor Parks initiative is a wonderful recognition of the progress we’re making as Freshkills Park continues to take shape. The Anchor Parks project, now entering design, will focus on South Park.

There’s still time to see “Freshkills Park: Landscape in Motion” at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge in the St. George Ferry Terminal. Installed September 22 – December 7, 2016, “Landscape in Motion” is the exhibition capstone to a landscape photography competition organized by Freshkills Park with the Staten Island Advance.

At his talk on October 20, Paul Moakley took an expansive approach to landscape photography. “You could use the landscape to talk about so many different issues,” the photographer, curator for the Alice Austen House Museum, and deputy director of photography at TIME explained, and his talk illustrated that point.

Starting September 22, the Freshkills Park: Landscape in Motion photography exhibition will be on display at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge. Through a collection of photographs and a calendar of programs, Landscape in Motion will illustrate the transformation of the Fresh Kills Landfill on the Island’s West Shore to a public park.

Staten Island-based artist DP Lampman has been selected to create an art installation as part of the NYCEDC New Stapleton Waterfront project.

In 2011, Lampman unveiled Freshkills Park’s first temporary on-site art installation, I Am Within/I Am Without. Three large-scale human figurative sculptures atop one of the hills at Freshkills Park reached out with multiple limbs towards the sky, then gently curved back towards the Earth.

After 11 months at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, NEST was de-installed on August 9th. A collaborative collection of habitats found in Freshkills Park, Kirk Finkel’s NEST represents an intersection between the diverse bird population of Staten Island and the dynamic urban environment that surrounds it.

“Freshkills Park: Landscape in Motion” will open to the public this September. Installed at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge in the St. George Ferry Terminal, “Landscape in Motion” will be the exhibition capstone to a landscape photography competition organized by Freshkills Park with the Staten Island Advance.