Season 8: Year in Review

Part 4 of 4. For a short review of our whole season, please click here.

Our Basilica Back Gallery artist in residence program returned for its second year, inviting a broad range of local artists into our white cube gallery to create work inspired by Hudson and the surrounding region, from Joe Mama-Nitzberg’s affecting Things Remembered to Annie Bielski’s Clearance.

Visual artists brought color and light to all our programs, including Jungil Hong’s lush, tactile textiles and Laleh Khorramian’s ambitious, striking Main Hall takeover installation at Basilica SoundScape.

Our Psychic Green Trailer also hosted two separate residencies in 2018, from Drew Joy’s sound art residency ahead of 24-HOUR DRONE to sculptor Marka Kiley’s multimedia nature photography. Our Pioneering People Basilica Benefit honoree Courtney Love inspired both visual tributes and performance. Weaver Margot Becker joined us as the sole time-keeper at our 24-HOUR DRONE long-form homage to sound, weaving uninterrupted for the full 24 hours.

BASILICA BACK GALLERY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE SERIES
From painters to sculptors, to textile artists, to collagists, our Basilica Back Gallery hosted a wide range of artists exploring the theme of ‘Hudson As Muse’ and creating work inspired by the eclectic past and present of Hudson and its surroundings. Launching the 2018 series, Joe Mama-Nitzberg’s Things Remembered poignantly, deftly balanced the comic and the tragic with a multimedia array of new work. Annie Bielski’s Clearance assembled a collection of cargo t-shirts ‘locally sourced from the shelves of Walgreens’ with hand-sewn organza pouches, purchased from a store that sells items for your store. Participants in 2018’s Social Justice Leadership Academy – comprised of Hudson youth ages 12 – 20 – presented an exhibition which explored meaning-making through Afrofuturism. Ben Fain’s Gone Fishin’ – launched as part of (FREAK) FLAG DAY – presented an indoor/outdoor exhibition of metal forms shrouded in pixelated mesh.

Basilica SoundScape
From kimonos to cinema, rugs to protest art, sculptors, painters, weavers and dreamers transformed every corner of Basilica SoundScape 2018 with visual art.
We were honored to have the work of Jungil Hong, Tabita Rezaire and Alexander Heir across our reclaimed factory, while Laleh Khorramian staged SoundScape’s most ambitious installation to-date with her floating, shifting hand-painted kimonos draped high over SoundScapers’ heads.

Basilica SoundScape 2018 also hosted the first Back Gallery SoundScape takeover. With music provided by friends The Lot Radio, Basilica Back Gallery featured a group show by recent artists in residence who were invited to explore the location itself as muse and to create work with Hudson’s eclectic present and past as central inspiration. The group show featured work by artists including Annie Bielski, the Social Justice Leadership Academy, Jim Krewson and newest resident Roman Horst.

This year’s SoundScape also featured a satellite event hosted by Basilica collaborators Second Ward, created with the aim of getting visitors to step further up the path and explore our beloved city of Hudson. Art duo Trouble returned to Hudson for the first time since their large-scale installation as part of Basilica Hudson’s 24-HOUR DRONE event in 2017 to helm the show. Entitled Ornament-Body, the show gathered and presented performance, sound, video, sculpture and installation work from Trouble’s dozen years of practice.

SoundScape’s literature component also returned in full force, with the poems and essays of Hanif Abdurraqib sticking in our minds well into the fall.

24-HOUR DRONE
Outside of the long-form sonic immersion, 24-HOUR DRONE was colored and rejuvenated by a host of visual artists, performers and makers. Hudson-based artist, weaver, and educator Margot Becker undertook a meditation on ancient industry, time-keeping, and bodily stamina with a 24-hour weave, calling on ritual and patience to create a record of time and space in the form of cloth. Margot’s pieces produced during this time are available to purchase here.

Tattoo artist and illustrator Dylan Kraus returned to 24-HOUR DRONE to embark on a similarly long-form, immersive practice, sharing space with Margot to provide hand-poked tattoos to DRONERS.

Multimedia artist Rebecca Borrer and inventor/artist Corey Bauer created custom visuals across the DRONE space.

Basilica’s long-time collaborator Elise McMahon of LikeMindedObjects brought life to the factory, both in her design of lounge zones and the provision of her artist loungers, which were made in collaboration with twenty artists from across the country.

SECOND ANNUAL BRIGHT FUTURE BAR BQ
On 4th July, Hudson based artist Jack Walls curated and hosted a late afternoon art opening and Bar-BQ happy hour which morphed into an epic dance party come sundown. Culminating in HifiBangalore’s Exploding Inevitable Dance Party with the deep dance grooves of DJ Tedd Patterson and DJ Uncle Rudy, the party featured sculpture and video art installation by Kingston based artist Andrew H Shirley. Shirley screened his detritus strewn existential fantasy Wastedland 2 and exhibited several site specific sculptures from the traveling immersive film installation. As a centerpiece to the install, artists William Thomas Porter and UFO 907’s spaceship sculpture The Beginning if Not the End was installed on the Basilica grounds for long-term display.

PIONEERING PEOPLE BASILICA BENEFIT: COURTNEY LOVE
“Courtney’s contributions to art, music, and culture helped inform the way I take up space on a stage and move as an artist in the world. The vulnerabilities of our political and cultural moment were felt throughout the room that night, but witnessing Love’s impact on each person in the room – from audience member to bartender to performer – affirmed my belief in the essential powers of art and music for human connection and change. It was an honor to perform a rendition of “Good Sister, Bad Sister,” as a tribute to her with my cousin and collaborator Zia Anger.”
Annie Bielski, performer
Thank you to artist and long time friend of Basilica Jim Krewson for his unique airbrush take on Courtney’s iconic lips, which could be found on screen, in print and on our limited edition merch. Meanwhile, Courtney’s fierce, unshakeable spirit inspired performance work by Zia Anger & Annie Bielski and Davon, among others.

BASILICA PSYCHIC GREEN TRAILER
A relic of Hudson’s industrial past preserved and renovated by Basilica Co-Founder Tony Stone, Basilica Hudson’s Psychic Green Trailer once again featured a range of artists experimenting and creating new work in the space. For 24-HOUR DRONE, sound artist Drew Joy conducted a week-long series of field recordings, before presenting the site-specific composition as part of our annual homage to sound. Later in the season, opening in tandem with 2018’s Basilica Farm & Flea Holiday Market, artist Marka Kiley hosted nature photography.

IMAGE CREDITS: header images by Zebi Williams, Tomm Roeschlein, Samantha Marble; Ben Fain’s Gone Fishin’ at FREAK FLAG DAY 2018 by Tomm Roeschlein; Laleh Khorramian at Basilica SoundScape by Samantha Marble for The Creative Independent; Margot Becker at 24-HOUR DRONE 2018 by Tomm Roeschlein; Andrew H Shirley artwork and Annie Bielski at SECOND ANNUAL BRIGHT FUTURE BAR BQ by Tomm Roeschlein; Zia Anger and Annie Bielski at Pioneering People Courtney Love by Samantha Marble