Nancy O'Connor: Welcome Table
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to announce "Welcome Table", a solo-exhibition by artist Nancy O'Connor, opening Friday, May 3, 2024, with an artist's reception from 6:30-8:30PM.
Conversation between artist Nancy O'Connor and Anne Tucker, former chief curator of Photography at Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Saturday May 4th at 1:30PM.
"Welcome Table" is a homage to a place and a community of African American Cowboys long since gone that the artist has known since childhood. This exhibition highlights the presence and energy of the Greater Zion Baptist Church which was a pillar and a gathering place for all the Cowboys and their loved ones. Located on the south Texas prairies and although now empty, still stands.
For the artist, absence has created a presence that has led her into the language of souls and an archeology of memory. Her first experience in the church was when she attended the memorial service of her close friend who she loved dearly Spencer Cook in 1976.
After attending Spencer Cook's service O'Connor realized that an entire way of life connected to the earth was disappearing. Working with cameras, sound recording equipment, collected objects and artifacts, She gathered the traces of what remained of her community's life and culture, to create installations that became a journey through a way of life connected to the earth that no longer exists today. Welcome Table invites us all to the possibility of re-connecting with a life engaged in through nature. Stories shared with the artist by the cowboys and their families recall what it was like to experience the vast prairies of South Texas on horseback before there were planes overhead and cellphones buzzing in pockets.
Living in the question is what drives Nancy O'Connor's work. What remains when people and cultures disappear? What stories are left hovering and untold when we encounter empty spaces if we allow ourselves to perceive them? Is it possible to capture this presence in what appears to be absence?
Artist Bio.
Nancy O'Connor was born in 1957 in Victoria, Texas. In 1975, she studied filmmaking and music at Trinity University in San Antonio and received a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Texas in Austin. She has lived in San Francisco, New York and currently resides in Houston.
Selected exhibitions include a solo show at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Corpus Christi Museum, Corpus Christi; Alternative Museum, New York; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington; Blaffer Gallery, Houston; and Guannzhou Museum, China; Houston Center for Photography, Houston.
