The University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery
is more than a venue. It's a public program with a mission to make contemporary
art available and accessible to all, and it serves as a unique and important
place to see and experience art in Springfield. We welcome the broader
community to the gallery, where all events are free and open to the public.
A primary emphasis of the gallery program is to exhibit
works of art that focus on trends and topics that are at the forefront of
contemporary art today, among them social engagement, identity and
representation, displacement, environmentalism, digital culture and social
justice. This focus on contemporary art, which is stated in the gallery
mission, contributes significantly to the cultural landscape of Springfield.
Our program features ambitious and experimental art exhibitions, artist talks,
screenings and discussions, and we strongly support the vision of the artists
that we work with. We exhibit a range of professional artists, from those who
are just beginning to emerge in their career, to internationally renowned and
established artists.
While the gallery is a public-facing resource, we serve our
UIS student community first and foremost. The gallery is an important space on
campus where self-discovery is encouraged and promoted. It can be exciting and
formative for our students to experience the rotating slate of exhibitions, the
conversations taking place in contemporary art and the ways that artists are
working across disciplines.
The gallery serves as a novel educational space that
generates curiosity and critical thinking, and where experiential encounters
with artworks equip students to interpret meaning and message in a complex
visual world. The gallery is not just for art students alone; our exhibitions
regularly emphasize discipline-specific topics as they intersect with art,
offering strong thematic anchors in science, history, anthropology and
technology, among others. The gallery cultivates students as innovative, abstract
thinkers and risk-takers. Our program opens pathways for students to make
personal and emotional associations, and to broaden their world and cultural
views.
The UIS Visual Arts Gallery is currently hosting an
exhibition, “Consider a Disappearance,” by Chicago-based artist and
experimental filmmaker Ruby Que. The exhibition launches from a cultural
fascination with missing persons stories; Amelia Earhart, Connie Converse and
Jimmy Hoffa all notoriously disappeared – and we remain fixated on these
enduring mysteries. In 1975, the artist Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea, and
little is known about his fate. Que obsessively watched and rewatched his video
works, which often involved him leaving the frame, becoming hidden and
disappearing.
“Consider a Disappearance” relies on the histories and
reverberations of a disappearance – but the artist looks beyond cultural
fascination, where disappearance serves as a lens to consider individuals that
have been forced to disappear, or into hiding – and the possibility of
disappearance or invisibility as an act of resistance.
Later this spring, the gallery will welcome the exhibition
“Junk Drawer,” by Champaign-based printmaker and installation artist Guen
Montgomery. Her work is often deeply rooted in personal experience, and she
draws from material culture and family mythology to consider the performative
intricacies of gender, queerness and identity. “Junk Drawer” looks to
connections between possessions and their role in the construction of identity
and class – while acknowledging the often-neglected fact that we are all simply
animals with vulnerable and impermanent bodies. “You can’t take it with you,”
says the proverb, but the legacy of objects endures, in life and beyond, to
tell stories, foster understanding and empathy, and preserve cultural
narratives. “Junk Drawer” attempts to resolve what it means to be a
“person-animal” in material culture today.
The spring schedule will culminate with the annual student
exhibition in late April, which is closely tied to the capstone course in
Visual Arts, Professional Skills. In this context, students rely on the gallery
as a learning laboratory where critical professional skills can be applied,
practiced and refined. This course culminates in a professional exhibition,
which this year will feature visual arts seniors Sophia Britt, Cicely Flynn,
Ashley Martinez, Savannah Saltsgaver and Maxine Touchette. These students are
already hard at work preparing and strategizing for this group exhibition that
will feature a variety of media and themes.
The UIS Visual Arts Gallery is not just for those who have a
passion for the arts; it can be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. It’s a space
with a big impact. Here, art isn't just observed; it fosters our creative
community and cultivates a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world we
inhabit. Visit our gallery and take part in the process of discovery.
Allison Lacher is the director of the UIS Visual Arts
Gallery. The gallery is located in the UIS Health and Sciences Building, room
201. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
