Mudmaid Museum: Pattie Chalmers
April 2015
Practice Gallery and Pattie Chalmers invite you to step right up to a time when Mudmaids ruled the American Waterways!
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Don’t forget to Exit through the Gift Shop!
Pattie Chalmers’ Mudmaid Museum, reveals an alternate history filled with artifacts from when Mudmaids where first encountered in the American waterways. The Mudmaid Museum offers books, woodcarvings, photos, rag dolls, diaries, letters, and much, much, more from this foggy past!Chalmers’ exhibition is based on historic presentations that suffer from the effects of a curatorial viewpoint. The cultural assumptions and references of a museum staff often come into play even with rigorous attempts to present objects and histories in an unbiased manner. Contemporary artists have called attention to the presence of this curatorial voice in institutions by re-curating and re-labeling the objects on display in museum collections. Chalmers’ approach is to create an independent “museum” within the walls of a gallery presenting fictitious artifacts, and a false history in the hope that it might motivate viewers to take a less passive role when presented with “facts”, and extend this critical view to information from other sources.About the Artist Pattie Chalmers is a visual artist whose work has been shown internationally in New Zealand, Australia, Hungary, Canada, and the United States. She has received the McKnight Artist in Residence fellowship from Northern Clay Center, the Ontario Arts Council Grant (2004, 2003), The Canadian Sculpture Society Abraham and Malka Green Award, and is currently an Associate Professor at SIU Carbondale in Cabondale, IL. Chalmers received her MFA from the University of Minnesota, MN and her BFA (cum laude) from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB. See more of Chalmers’ work here: Pattie Chalmers--Mudmaid Museum: Pattie Chalmers Opening Reception Friday, April 3rd from 6-10 The exhibition will be on view through April 25thPRACTICEOur gallery practice seeks to support artist practices that focus on performance, participation and experimentation.PRACTICE is open to the public on First Fridays and on Saturdays from 2-6pm. If you would like to drop by some other time please email info@practicegallery.org for an appointment/with questions. Visit PRACTICE online at http://practicegallery.org