Please note that this program has been rescheduled to take place on Saturday, Feb 25 at 7PM, in-person at Smack Mellon.
In conjunction with Emily Clayton’s solo exhibition, Hydra, Smack Mellon will host a conversation between the artist and Leigh Ledare. The two artists will discuss the work on view through the lens of the archive, autobiography and cultural subjectivities.
Born in Savannah, Tennessee, Emily Clayton‘s work spans drawing, painting, photography, and documentary video. She uses the formal immediacy of painting and the intimacy of autobiography to consider class structures, power dynamics, and formations of subjectivity. Her recent exhibitions include: a forthcoming solo presentation at Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN (2023); Love, New York, NY (2020); Ciccio, New York, NY (2019); Fiebach, Minninger, Cologne, Germany (2020); Kate Werble, New York, NY (2015); and Susan Inglett, New York, NY (2015). In 2018 she published a drawing book, How to Write an Erotic Novel, with A6 Books in London.
The work of artist Leigh Ledare maps psychosocial relations inscribed within the various orders of film, photography, language, and public and private social constructions. Ledare’s projects have been exhibited extensively in the US and abroad. Recent exhibitions include: To you who make the springtime, I send my winter, Michel Didier, Paris (2022); XX XX, with Nicolas Guagnini, Meyer Reigger, Berlin (2021); The Plot, The Art Institute of Chicago (2017); Vokzal, The Box, Los Angeles (2017); Place du Jardin aux Fleurs, Office Baroque, Brussels, as well as numerous group exhibitions including the 2017 Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016). Ledare’s work has also been the subject of major surveys at Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2013), and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2012); and in January 2023 his feature film The Task (2017) will begin streaming on the Criterion Channel. Ledare is currently a Senior Critic in the MFA Sculpture program at Yale University.
Image left to right: Emily Clayton, Photo by Eric Helgas; Leigh Ledare, Courtesy of the Artist