Spectral Marauding

Redux Contemporary Art Center is excited to present Spectral Marauding, a group exhibition highlighting the work of Southern Louisiana based artist collective, Luminous Lookout which is composed of Dawn Black, Kathryn Hunter, Kelli Scott Kelley, and Jonathan Mayers. Redux’s annual artist collective exhibition presents the public with an opportunity to better understand, and engage with, the work of a collaborative unit of artists who strive to produce a cohesive, shared statement.

The Luminous Lookout artists’ haunting, curious images address the current fragility of our time and ecosystems and provoke critical thought about our place in the world. Each artist employs unique materials and processes to create their work.

Using a variety of collected source material, Dawn Black examines systems of power and identity to visualize sociological narratives through water-based media on paper and found objects. Behavioral attitudes and norms from both our cultural consciousness and unconscious are at the center of these examinations, revealing social orders and continuing to ask what makes an individual (or a population) predatory or quarry.

Kathryn Hunter’s stitched and mix media work explores the subject through symbolism and visual narration. Animals are characters used to reflect on violence and pacification, truth and deception, cultural and wealth idolization, death and life joined together.

Kelli Scott Kelley’s metaphorical images are painted on antique domestic linens, which reference traditional women’s handicrafts, and an ecologically conscious art making practice. She is moved by the exquisite beauty in the world, as well as the absurdity and ugliness. The inevitability of death and the seeming unavoidable demise of the natural world, affects her and inspires images.

Often featuring images of fantastical spirits as protagonists and wardens, Jonathan Mayers’ work addresses numerous accounts of environmental plundering that have come to pass in swamps and basins.

Luminous Lookout derives from a similar coastal ecosystem as Charleston, places vulnerable to natural disasters and weather events, while also being surrounded by the beauty of the salt marsh. Their work displays recognizable subject matter while touching on resilience and the changing landscape, in addition to pondering the destructive nature of people and their reactions to each other, physically and metaphorically.