January 13 - February 11, 2023
Crawl Space | Guen Montgomery
Artist Statement:
Crawl Space is a neglected place where things are left and forgotten with the assumption that they will always be there, unchanging. There’s a lot piled down there that we don’t need. Living there, Grendel and his mother were fur and cell mammals, just like me. It turns out we get braided into the same cycles, whether we stand on the surface or cower below.
I used to have dreams where I would wake up panicked. I told my mom that I was frightened because I couldn’t fit into the Barbie clothes. Later, when my granny died, my mom saved her slips and undergarments. When my mom dies, where will I keep all her clothes?
I’m more Neanderthal than 81% of 23andMe’s other customers. The company says that I have a Neanderthal gene variant associated with ‘trouble discarding rarely used possessions.’ The carrier bag theory of evolution says we made baskets and bags because we needed somewhere to put our stuff, now that we walk upright.
Artist Bio:
Guen Montgomery is an artist and performer whose work investigates identity through studies of gender, material culture, regional narrative, and family mythology. Materially, Montgomery’s work is located in the intersections between printmaking, performance, and sculpture. Montgomery has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has work in multiple public collections including the Centre for Art and Design in Churchill Australia, and Mushashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan, with recent exhibitions in Nashville and St. Louis. Guen currently teaches in the Studio Arts program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she lives with her wife, dog, and two cats.
Crawl Space is a neglected place where things are left and forgotten with the assumption that they will always be there, unchanging. There’s a lot piled down there that we don’t need. Living there, Grendel and his mother were fur and cell mammals, just like me. It turns out we get braided into the same cycles, whether we stand on the surface or cower below.
I used to have dreams where I would wake up panicked. I told my mom that I was frightened because I couldn’t fit into the Barbie clothes. Later, when my granny died, my mom saved her slips and undergarments. When my mom dies, where will I keep all her clothes?
I’m more Neanderthal than 81% of 23andMe’s other customers. The company says that I have a Neanderthal gene variant associated with ‘trouble discarding rarely used possessions.’ The carrier bag theory of evolution says we made baskets and bags because we needed somewhere to put our stuff, now that we walk upright.
Artist Bio:
Guen Montgomery is an artist and performer whose work investigates identity through studies of gender, material culture, regional narrative, and family mythology. Materially, Montgomery’s work is located in the intersections between printmaking, performance, and sculpture. Montgomery has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has work in multiple public collections including the Centre for Art and Design in Churchill Australia, and Mushashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan, with recent exhibitions in Nashville and St. Louis. Guen currently teaches in the Studio Arts program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she lives with her wife, dog, and two cats.
