Aquarium Gallery & Studios hosts an exhibit every month,
with an opening reception every Second Saturday. Except special scheduling around Mardi Gras! and other holidays!
Artist Bio:
Brendon Palmer-Angell (b. 1984) is a painter living and working in New Orleans, LA. Brendon’s work focuses on portraits of humanity, often touching on themes related to veneration, community, and impermanence. Whether it's a three-story mural or a small oil painting, his work strives to create an intimate connection with the viewer, and to convey his subject’s inner essence and innate value.
Born in Northern New York, Brendon received a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University. Brendon’s work has been exhibited in New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington DC. He has executed more than a dozen large-scale public murals, including a multi-story portrait of Allen Toussaint on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans. In 2020 he received a grant for public art in the Gentilly Resilience District, and his portrait series Irreplaceable: Taken by the Pandemic was selected for the Ogden Museum’s Louisiana Contemporary.
It's November with a chance of fall weather and a shift into the holidays. But before that chaos begins, come out this weekend to the Aquarium Gallery and see Flux.
Flux is an eclectic solo show by New Orleans based artist Brendon Palmer-Angell.
As people try to convince us that up is down, left is right, and black is white, Brendon has found a lingering sense of disorientation in recent years. And yet, it is also a time of tremendous potential – a liminal moment between possible progress and catastrophic decay. Flux is an attempt to begin to re-anchor by reflecting on who we venerate, while simultaneously challenging any sense of fixation, allowing complexity and impermanence to complement that sense of gravity so that we can remain fluid. The show includes large-scale portraits of legendary activists John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Alongside them are pieces portraying clouds seemingly frozen in time, unclear whether it is dusk or dawn. The artist invites comparisons of different scales of transience, and questions about how beauty and the ephemeral can be reconciled.
Flux, Opening reception Nov. 12th 6pm-10pm
Open Wednesdays 5-8pm, Saturday & Sundays 12-4pm, Closing reception Dec. 3rd 6-8pm or by appointment.
Catch and Release, Saturday 6-10pm 4/8/23
This month at the Aquarium we are displaying our past and current artists in resident! Every month we have a new artist come live and work in the Aquarium. It is always a whirl wind of inspiration for everyone visiting and hosting. So many amazing artists and now friends cycle through and its all because I want to provide people the opportunity to travel, share inspiration and skills and create. Its provides space and time for people to relax and reset even if they're in mass production mode. Many artists have moved to Nola after their residency and many were here already but we want to continue our relationship with alums! I guess that's what we should call them, alumni- sort of a catch and release program if you fish!
The show includes mostly local/regional artists: Emery Tillman (2019)
Leah Danze (19) Flora Cabili (21) Jasper Means (22) Neil Hancock (22) Nicole Banowetz and Devin Reilly (current)
Forever Green
By Jacob Reptile
Oct. 8th 6pm-10pm
Open Sundays Oct 9th- Nov 6th Noon-4pm
A celebration of the joy that plants bring, with an eye on the anthropocene world. Stepping into the gallery, you will be transported into a plush greenhouse where it feels like plants may come to life as puppets. You may be asking yourself if you're a part of ”The Little Shop Of Horrors.” What might the plants have to say? They have all been created out of the discarded materials of our everyday lives and are full of renewal, joy, and hope. Materials saved from the dump (clothes, curtains, couches, packing material, scraps and samples, cardboard, and electrical wire) are crafted together to rebirth the ordinary and forgotten unto the magical and celebratory. Can you imagine a world with less waste and more joy? These ‘Forever Plants’ honor the natural world we want to remain a part of, plus they live forever (even in the dark)!
Artist Bio:
Flora and fauna have always been a passion for Jacob. He aims to celebrate the world that humans pretend not to be a part of but destroy so easily. He left his hometown of New Orleans to get a BFA in Fiber Art at the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004. When he returned Jacob had a new passion for textile, wearable, and green art. Jacob Reptile’s art celebrates the rebirth of materials down to the molecule and the joy in life.
Missing the sense of community and collaboration that he experienced in art school, he decided to purchase a large run-down building in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood and, with a lot of hard work and generous help, turned it into what became the Aquarium Gallery and Studios.
In 2016 the building was almost entirely destroyed by a large fire. The very next day, Jacob started rebuilding with help from his family and friends. During the rebuilding process, finding himself without a home or studio Jacob started the performance group The Flaming Flagettes, opening a new arena for artistic instincts and costume-making.
With the Aquarium Gallery and Studios reopened, Jacob Reptile wants to nurture the skills in collaboration and community-building that he discovered in himself due to necessity, while also renewing focus on fiber art inspired by nature that brings joy but highlights different environmental problems.
Perfect Memory
“Perfect Memory” is an investigation of the unbroken ancestral memory held by Black people in the Americas by means of waves and water, inspired by Toni Morrison’s quote “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was,” and the question posed in the Louis Armstrong classic “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” Through collage, video, song, fiber art, and the channeling of Spirit, JESSC.X explores what it means to be a Black transplant in a city below sea level, surrounded by bodies of water.
JESSC.X (she/they) is a Boston-born and New Orleans-based artist that explores self-identity and Blackness through collage, fiber art, mixed media work, and music. They create work intended to usher all who bear witness to it into a state of reverence for the past, understanding of the present, and hope for futures to come.
The Berklee College of Music trained artist exists at the intersection of visual and aural art-making. In 2019 their voice was spotlighted on the debut album of Warner Music Group signed rapper IDK, titled “Is He Real?” also featuring Tyler the Creator, Burna Boy, and Pusha T. In February 2020 JESSC.X curated the Black History Matters 365: Now and Forever exhibition at the Lunder Arts Center’s Raizes Gallery.
Venus As A Boy
By Yashi Davalos Opening Reception July 9th -Aug.
The Venus As A Boy series is a reflection of love as we know it, redefined through an imaginary aesthetic alluding to all utopian hopes for love, sans binaries, transcending gender relativity in love. If women are from Venus and men are from Mars is the satire of a dream, this is where love isn't dictated by the patriarchy. Does it have to be socially as interplanetary as it can feel? Venus as a Boy is where we socially make space, empowering political through aesthetic in this series, playing on androgyny as femme of center in this display of queer love.
Artist Bio:
Yashira’s experience being raised as a Northside ATLien has shaped the way her identity intersects, not only in her world view’s perception of Tokenism, but in expressing the many non-monolithic aspects of her identity, challenging the various levels of class, that have seamlessly disrupted mobility in her life. All her work is a tribute to her Afro Puerto Rican Mother who pulled her out of project housing after her Mexican father was deported. Doña Celia worked endlessly just to watch her community center funding get pulled and the house she had built from the ground, foreclosed. Her mother and the city of Atlanta culturally socialized her to believe in overseeing what we cling to and how we build. Experience has proven that you never know how bureaucracy will one day attempt to rip that away. Stand for something or concede to displacement. Yashira’s goal as an artist and as a journalist is to capture and research the eloquence of curated culture, challenging class with all intersections included because they leave out a lot of stuff when they tell it.
Yashira is currently a member of The Front Gallery in the St.Claude Arts District and is now showing her work at Carroll Gallery, The Front, and Aquarium Gallery.
Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue
Opening reception June 11th 6pm-10pm
The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue is an artists collective in New Orleans that are passionate about collage and community. The Krewe hosts a Collage Night at the Domino on St. Claude every third Wednesday of the month where anyone can join in some casual collage making. They have also produced group exhibitions, collaborative work, and publications. Featured artists appearing at the Aquarium Gallery in June include Christopher Kurts, Michael Pajón, Ella Campbell, Kevin Comarda, and Savanna Meekins. You can follow the Krewe on Facebook or on Instagram @neworleanscollage.
Feb. At the Aquarium
We have two nights of events at the gallery this month. Our artist resident has a special performance artist installation with three viewings! you must RSVP!
About this event
Over the course of a month-long residency at the Aquarium Omer Gal has woven together an amalgamation of sound, animation, sculpture and light to form a living installation that will be activated in a live ritual performance on Thursday 2/10 at 7pm and 8:30 and Friday 2/11 at 8:30pm and 9:30pm.
You're invited to witness.
The performance is 20minutes long and is FREE with RSVP. Space is limited indoors to 17 to not overcrowd, but there will be additional window peeking spots(weather permitting).
Entrance to vaxxed or proof of negative test. Please wear N95 masks indoors or double up even if vaxxed, if you don't have a mask there will be some at the gallery.
Hope to see you there!
more of Omer's world can be found here: Omergal.com
Please Hold
The 2nd Friday our studio-mate Eliza
Wapner and Virginia Walcott are
exhibiting a new collaboration.
6pm-10pm, Feb. 11, 2022
New Orleans-based artists Eliza Wapner
and Virginia Walcott present Please Hold,
an interdisciplinary exhibition.
Combining textiles, video, painting,
sculpture, and text-based works, the
show examines the dissonance between
our unpredictable, mysterious bodies
and the rote motions of the medical
system. Looking beyond health care
providers and their practices, Please Hold
explores the anonymous and disquieting environments created by these systems and the deeply personal experience of navigating them. In their first body of work together, Walcott and Wapner ask you to notice the in-between spaces of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what, the repetitive dance of questions and answers, the ghosts of pain, and the fatigue of perpetual doubt. How do these moments spur shifts in our relationship to our body and one another?
Drawing respectively from life-long experiences with chronic health conditions and a recent bout of misdiagnosed heart problems, Wapner and Walcott explore the invisible strife and absurdity of navigating our ever-changing bodies. Join us for the opening of Please Hold on Friday, February 11 from 6-10 pm at Aquarium Gallery located at 934 Montegut St. New Orleans, LA 70117. Viewing appointments and closing reception to be announced.
Apart From Us
Revisited work by Joey Hartmann-Dow
Apart From Us asks how we find our place in a world that pushes us to adapt to constant change while also holding space for our roots, contrasting old and new, and wrangling a sustainable future built on an unsustainable recent history. These figures are looking for hope within a system that increasingly separates us from the very thing that built us.
These pieces were originally created in 2016, shortly after the fire at Aquarium Studio where Joey had just finished a residency, and were revisited and updated for the version you see here.
No Second Saturday reception, but see the show on Joey's website: www.usandweart.com and join us for a closing reception on 1/21!
In each new room you find your harmonious role.
This November we are showing a long time Aquarium Member Sadie Sheldon. She collages recycled materials not often combined through laborious layering and
sewing.
6 -10 pm Open reception 11/13/21
and by appointment (504)982-0314
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Time, After Time is a group show of the many studio alumni! October 2021, We had 16 Aquarium alumni in the show. Where has the time gone? We have all lost and gained time and have developed confusing relationships with it recently. The Aquarium started off slow with three gallery rooms and a couple of studios but at its highest capacity in 2020 we had the gallery room, 10 studios, three apartments, and one artist residency space. The space has had a lot of growing and re-birthing to do after the fire but we continue on as a dreamy art collective. I hope you can come out to both of our events and support this amazing artists family. Masks will be required while inside!
artist included: Mary Logan Rooney, Ryn Wilson, Milagros, Seth Damm, Jenna Bonistalli, Sadie Sheldon, Joey Hartmann-Dow, Gus Hoffman, Enrica Ferraro, Marta Rodriguez Maleck, Colin Roberson, Sarah Ball, Kate Hanrahan and M Collin Miles, Jacob Reptile, and the current studio members!
Since You've Been Gone
Studio Artists: Bronwyn Walls, Jacob Reptile, Ursa Eyer, Collin Miles, Maddie Stratton, Jaime Bird, Kelly Couch, and Jessica Bizer
opening reception July 10th 2021 6pm-10pm
open by appointment and closing reception July 31st 6-9pm
Aquarium Gallery
934 Montegut st. New Orleans, La
PAINTING FOR COLOR'S SAKE
COLLIN MILES
Opening Reception:
6-10pm
Saturday October 12, 2019
FIELD NOTES IN BLUE
Bronwyn Walls
Opening Reception:
6-10pm
Saturday September 14, 2019
A mixed media collection on grief, intrapersonal healing, and returning to an old home by New Orleans artist Bronwyn Walls.
Poetry reading @ 5pm.
IS THIS WHAT TOMORROW IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE?
Emery Tillman
August 2019
For two months Emery Tillman has been our art in resident using materials from thread to foam and fluorescent tube lights. Emery's work focuses on the ever evolving idea of how otherness and intimacy go together. The work utilizes historical correspondence through queer love letters, such as the relationship of Eleanor Roosevelt and her partner Lorena Hickok. She manipulates neon lights to change the emotions of pieces and tie in other materials such as soft sculptures.
SMUGGLED ORCHIDS
THEN REPENT
leah danze
June 2019
Leah Danze is a painter from Texas. They are the artist in residence at the Aquarium for the month of June. Leah’s artwork weaves memories from Texas with imagined landscapes from the Philippines (where their maternal grandmother is from) with experiences being raised Catholic as a child. Their work touches on themes related to intimacy, memory and the forgiveness of plants.
This show also includes an installation with Maizy Stell.
PAPER BOAT
May 2019
PAPER BOAT PROJECT
The project comprises over thirty stories collected from family and friends about Katrina and the years since, printed and stretched to form the hull of a 16-foot canoe. With enough layers of stories about water and life in South Louisiana, it will be fully-functional on the water, free and available to the community for education, programs, or a paddle in the watery places that surround us.
The stories of the freshest layer are the work of 9 students from New Harmony High School. Their work is from a 3-day, overnight arts retreat that took place in the Manchac wetlands in March, just as the dragonfly nymphs began to crawl up from their aquatic adolescence and take their first flights, and just as the wild irises bloomed purple among the endless sea of bull’s tongue, waving lazily in gentle winds of spring.
More about the Paper Boat Project:
Variable Distances
Christopher Givens
March 2019
VARIABLE DISTANCES
a puzzle of relations is suspended above a collection of open boxes.
from one point springs a multiplicity of possibilities. questions abound.
fish and photographs and matchbooks hang in the air pointing in all directions with threaded pathways sewn together by poetic logic.
ordinary, everyday things wait to become strange and new.
the viewer is invited to trace these crossed lines backwards and forwards to what may be their origins or their futures. what is it to be here where I stand—this ground, this city, this country, this earth—comprised of multitudes and situated among multitudes? what if my attitude became my form? a question runs through each shifting point. find a compass; be lost.
A native of Monroe, Louisiana, Christopher Givens has been living and working in New Orleans for the past 12 years. Along with a fellow University of New Orleans film studies graduate, he ran a film, theatre, and art venue out of a hollowed-out shotgun house, facilitating the production of 21 plays and screening more than 200 films over four years. He is an MFA candidate in theatre design at Tulane University as well as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Community Engagement. He recently adapted and directed a movement-driven piece inspired by Frankenstein in the Tulane sculpture studio and also enjoys collaborating with the dance community. This spring and fall he will be helping to open a new space in downtown New Orleans dedicated to the performing arts called Beaubourg.
In Memory of Aziz
Sara Madandar
Feb.2019
Sara Madandar is a US based artist from Tehran, Iran. She received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and her BA in painting from the Art and Architecture Azad University of Tehran. She currently works in painting, sculpture, video and performance. Her work is often about the relationship of humans to their bodies and covers. Her most recent accolade was an award from the Texas Visual Artists Association (TVAA) in their 2016 exhibition in Dallas. She has also won a 2015 award, curated by Jessica Beck of the Andy Warhol museum, from the Southeastern College Art Conference. One of Madandar’s pieces is currently displayed at the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Ear to the Ground exhibit.
In this installation titled In Memory of Aziz, Madandar creates a nostalgic space inspired by memories of her grandmother’s house in Iran. The artist’s mother, in trying to maintain the memory of Aziz, the grandmother, has kept the house and furniture exactly as it was seventeen years ago when Aziz passed away. The installation consists of objects, a video, photo, and a painting. The objects installed here are all actual objects borrowed from the house, and the video and photo were also shot in that space. The painting, titled A Golden Key to the Heaven, is inspired by the Madandar’s uncle Ahmad, who was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war, towards the end of the conflict in 1990. Every year, for years after his death, the government of the Islamic Republic sent Aziz, his mother, a national flag. She would hang the new flag by the front door and then use the old ones around the house as blankets, sheets, or curtains. The flags transformed over the years as their colors faded. The curtain in this installation was one of these sheets, which Aziz made using six flags, and then later used it as a privacy curtain for an outdoor toilet in the backyard.
the video from the show is available at: https://vimeo.com/403012858?fbclid=IwAR18HFdjT5T5ZCJdelZgAXx-sIqeSLANg-84URZVFaHlcH0PBSVk4xb3G14
Six Simple Machines
Rosalie Smith
Nov. 2019
"Six Simple Machines" is an investigation of grief's degradation of essential human faculties, and its relationship to technology and gender performance as futile efforts towards permanence and control.
