(more in-progress images here)
Late Friday night we put the almost-finishing touches on our installation for the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. The Biennial is spread across five venues and the whole summer – we’re part of an exhibition focusing on collectives, curated by Astria Suparak and including subRosa, Transformazium, Temporary Services, and the trio of Lize Mogel, Sarah Ross and Ryan Griffis (more info on all of that here).

Looking to fill the space effectively while still working graphically and individually (and, hopefully humorously), we built a series of billboards out of cheap and/or recycled materials. After several weeks of prep work (extra special thanks to exhibition coordinator Tesar Freeman), last week saw the participation of eleven of us in person, some of us working on billboards for folks who couldn’t make it to town and sent materials.
We rarely get the chance to combine forces as a group in any number, so getting almost a dozen of us in one room together takes quite a bit of coordination to make it work! At times it can be a rather intense exercise in working together – we learn more about each other as individuals, and we learn more about ourselves as a larger, collaborative body. This summer is especially potent for us, as we’re headed to Ljubljana, Slovenia in mid-September to do another group install for the 2011 Slovenian Graphics Biennial! It’s right around the corner, actually…
The Pittsburgh Biennial doesn’t open until September 16. We’ll post some more images of the completed install after that date, but for now there are quite a few in-progress shots on our Flickr site here.