InLight ignites RVA on Friday the 13th
InLight, 1708 Gallery’s biggest event of the year, is returning to Richmond at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the eighth consecutive year Nov. 13-14.
A public exhibition of light-based art and performances, InLight invites artists to a particular neighborhood, attracting audiences to various areas of Richmond.
1708 Gallery was founded in 1978 by VCU faculty, including current dean of the VCU School of Arts Joe Seipel. The faculty was looking for a space to show more experimental contemporary art. The original gallery was located at 1708 E. Main St. in Shockoe Bottom, and moved to its current location in the RVA Arts District in 2001.
To celebrate the gallery’s 30th anniversary in 2007, the faculty wanted to do something new and exciting. Several board members had attended “Nuit Blanche” in Paris, an event that takes over the city from dusk to dawn and fills Paris with light-based installations. 1708 Gallery was inspired to do something similar in Richmond, so they held the first InLight in September 2007.
On Friday, the event will begin with the Community Lantern Parade and will feature performances, sculpture, video and interactive projects that will illuminate pathways, walls, sidewalks, green spaces, trees, benches, building facades and more in and around the VMFA.
As a nonprofit art space, 1708 Gallery works to present contemporary art, with a particular focus on emerging artists and and artists with innovative practices.
“The thing that distinguishes us from a commercial space is we’re not set up to make money from selling artwork. We don’t plan shows that way,” said Emily Smith, the executive director of 1708 Gallery. “Instead, we think about giving artists a platform to try new stuff, so we fund the projects with installations support, as opposed to selling the artwork.”
Each year, InLight is held at a new location. In the past, it was held at the Canal Walk and in Monroe Park, but this year it will be hosted by the VMFA, with installations displayed on the inside, the front lawn and sculpture garden of the museum.
For the first time ever, InLight has been expanded to a two-night event. After countless remarks about the disappointment of missing InLight, 1708 Gallery took on the challenge on expanding its availability to more people.
“If there was ever going to be an opportunity to have the support and the structure to do it two nights, the (VMFA) would be the place to do it,” Smith said. “They have the capacity for audiences and the ability to make it happen.”
Each year, a juror is chosen to select artists to showcase their work. 1708 Gallery aims to invite jurors from outside the Richmond metropolitan area to preserve an objective process, and this year they chose Alex Baker .
Baker currently resides in Philadelphia where he is the director of the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. He has organized exhibitions such as “Outsiderism,” “Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Time Produced Non Better” and “Department of Neighborhood Services: Isaac Tin Wei Lin, Barry McGee.” Before that, he was the senior curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, Australia, 2008-2012.
Proposals from artists are split evenly by local artists and national artists. Richmond residents Matt Lively and Tim Harper created an interactive piece that is powered by participants. It was created with all found objects and the light portion is a strobe that animates a drawing of a hummingbird.
“Tim’s miniature kinetic sculpture inspired me to ask him to collaborate on a lighted, scaled up version of what he does,” Lively said. “He uses only found objects and engineers them to move in a repetitive and wobbly way by a wind-up mechanism or a crank. I thought we could cause the movement to manipulate shadows and or animate the movement.
Sophia Belletti, Staff Writer
Sophia is a sophomore journalism major who writes for the Odyssey in addition to the news, sports and spectrum sections of the CT. Sophia also works in sales at Nordstrom and likes hiking and going to concerts. // Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn
