Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly, Couple – Teotihuacan, Mexico, 2014 © Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly — Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly, *Couple* – *Teotihuacan, Mexico,* 2014 © Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly

Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly, SIGHTSEERS
October 19-29, 2016
Curated by Arielle de Saint Phalle

Equity Gallery, 245 Broome Street, NY, NY 10002
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 18, 6pm-8pm
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6pm, and by appointment

Equity Gallery is pleased to announce SIGHTSEERS, the first solo exhibition by Andrew Gori & Ambre Kelly, on view from October 19 to October 29, 2016, with a public opening reception on Tuesday, October 18, 6-8pm. For the first time, Gori & Kelly will be showing works from a series of collaborative photographs spanning five years. Equity Gallery’s exhibition will be the works’ first appearance in New York City.

In SIGHTSEERS, Gori & Kelly present photographs documenting the self-portraiture practices of travelers and tourists in destinations spanning the globe. Pulling from Gori’s sense of narrative and photographic framing, and Kelly’s attention to portraiture and memory, the couple anoint, probe, and challenge the photographic instinct for 21st Century self-documentation. As if taking The Americans abroad, the works find varied reactions to modern living, as narrowed through the gestural striving to place oneself in postcard environments far from home. The camera explores social contracts between families and friends, self-objectification for lovers, husbands, and wives, and catches the unconscious performances of those attempting to capture the momentous expectation around visiting art and historical landmarks, the pressures and joys less of the experience than its cataloging and near-immediate consumption to social media.

According to curator Arielle de Saint Phalle, “With SIGHTSEERS, Gori and Kelly explore the voyeuristic tendencies of their own photographic practice by capturing the self-portraiture of others. Even in the most photographed destinations, their subjects have a pioneer-like desire to document, collect, and preserve their memories. Contemporary visual dialogues are dominated by the selfie – by reframing these images in a wider context, Gori and Kelly expose the raw, fragile, often humorous and performative ways in which individuals choose to be remembered.”

Shot entirely on 20th Century prosumer film cameras, Gori & Kelly embrace through the tactile form and finite film stock a sense of the fleeting in the excess of digital documentation. This gives further echo to the friction between social media’s copy/paste renumerations and the one-of-a-kind quality of a never-to-return moment – which destinations like last summer’s ephemeral Floating Piers, itself up for just two weeks, help extol.

Andrew Gori (b. 1982) was awarded the Maya Deren Film Award from Bard College where he studied Film and Electronic Media in 2004. He has since penned over four screenplays, one of which, My Thirty Year War (co-written by Jesse Allen) was shortlisted for IFP’s Kodak Grand Jury Award and optioned by This American Life. He has shot, written, and directed several short films, and is working on his first feature film.

Ambre Kelly (b. 1978) received her MFA in Painting from American University. She has shown work in New York City, Rome, Milan, Charleston, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. She is a current member of New York Artists Equity Association.

Gori & Kelly are known as co-creators of the Armory Arts Week exhibition project SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the production house The They Co., and the co-operative domestic art collective BOYFRIENDGIRLFRIEND.

Arielle de Saint Phalle received her undergraduate degree in Cinema Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2011 and has since continued to work in film. In 2015, she co-founded the Brooklyn-based curatorial project The YESNO Show.

About Artists Equity

New York Artists Equity Association, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1947 by artists and art patrons with the mission to promote opportunities for artists. It operates Equity Gallery, an art space located on the Lower East Side of New York City. For more information, please visit www.nyartistsequity.org.