Exhibitions

VIRGINIA OVERTON: SAVED

Frist Art Museum / 919 Broadway October 7, 2022 - December 31, 2022

Virginia Overton

The Frist Art Museum presents Virginia Overton: Saved, an exhibition of sculptures and site-specific installations made from repurposed everyday materials that create a dynamic visual poetry of reclamation and renewal. Organized by the Frist Art Museum, the exhibition will be on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from October 7 through December 31, 2022.

Virginia Overton seeks out the creative potential in ordinary building materials, defunct equipment, and other objects that have been discarded or fallen into disrepair. “In her practice, Overton focuses on harnessing and examining associations carried by items, machined or organic, that retain aspects of their former lives,” said Frist Art Museum chief curator Mark Scala.

Through a process that embraces improvisation, the artist adds layers of meaning by dismantling, constructing, realigning, and juxtaposing elements. “Encouraging us to see beauty and find value in neglected things, Overton presents an alternative to the attitude of disposability that prevails in consumer culture,” said Scala. The exhibition’s title, Saved, is a reference to how material objects can be re-envisioned as art instead of being cast away.

Though she has long worked in New York City, the Nashville-born artist maintains strong connections with Middle Tennessee, where her family has owned Wedge Oak Farm in Lebanon for more than a century. “Implicit in her work are references to these two settings, meshing city and farm, industrial and organic, refined and rough,” said Scala. “Throughout the exhibition, we see not just isolated artifacts-turned-artworks but also a larger gestalt in which the works inflect each other and the surrounding architecture.”

Image courtesy Overton Studio