Those who remember this spring’s brief efflorescence of Dugg Dugg — a group of upbeat, informed young artists who, shortly after lighting up the sign outside their 36th street warehouse space, scraped up against code violations — may have feared that re-emerging was going to be more aggravation than these folks could handle. (CLT Blog did an excellent piece on the whole saga, which you can read here.)
But re-emerge Dugg Dugg did, and while 130 W. Bland Street may lack the size and finish of Dugg Dugg’s original home, it was rife with energy and freshness October 23-25, when the exhibition America’s Children’s Home was on display.
Dugg Dugg was founded by Andrea Brown and Iris Williamson; now, Michael Southard is part of the team. The group’s exhibitions and projects are dominated by artists making the sort of contemporary, sometimes experimental, sometimes market-resistant work we need to see more of in Charlotte — especially when it’s made by younger artists who are still forming their aesthetic. You may not like everything you see, but most of it is worthy of discussion — and it is always far better to be provoked than bored. Dugg Dugg is the very thing we need here — a locus for the ambitious, but sometimes unproven, to stretch themselves, to not have to wait around until they’re deemed worthy. Because instead of waiting around, they can just as easily go somewhere else.
America’s Children’s Home included work by Ari Richter, Chris Thomas, Darren Goins, David Sackett, Heidi Landau, Jon Prichard, and Mike Calway-Fagen, who hail variously from Charlotte, Austin, Los Angeles and New York. (Of course, I loved Goins’ hyperactive paintings on holographic paper — even if they had to labor mightily to compete with the brick walls — but since I own one of his pieces, writing about him is a conflict of interest … so, dear readers, just pretend this sentence doesn’t exist.) I was particularly taken with Landau’s oblique, contemplative drawings from her series All My Family Kept in Files.
“We will continue to rotate spaces throughout Charlotte, bringing more group shows, solo exhibits, and site-specific work,” says Brown.
Dugg Dugg is restless and inspired, doing physical exhibitions in alternative spaces, Internet exhibitions on their Web site, and just about everything else on their blog.
Glad they’re back
(This is the second in our series on artist collaboratives. Check out the first one here. Images courtesy of Dugg Dugg.)
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2009.
