This installation explores the intersections of early childhood, caregiving, and the climate crisis. Drawing upon PS1’s domestic architectural features, the first room in the exhibition serves as a “playroom.” It is a homey space where visitors of all ages can manipulate an interactive sculpture, make, chat, and watch the durational video work Mama Reads the 2022 IPCC Report from the artist's couch, which has been temporarily relocated to the gallery.
The second area of the show, the “living room,” displays artworks that probe the difficulties of childrearing and environmental degradation through playful forms inspired by popular toys. Paintings of recent extreme weather events, co-created by Rowe and her four-year-old Tillie Currington-Rowe, cover the walls, offering a simultaneously cheerful and dark interpretations of the climate disaster.
Observed Changes and Their Causes welcomes children as an important part of the Iowa City art community and warmly invites them to attend all public program which has been designed to support their participation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Allison Rowe is a Canadian settler artist, educator, and researcher. She uses vibrant colors and familiar materials to create interdisciplinary works that make political topics digestible and inflate daily life to grandiose scales. Allison’s work inhabits the issues she attends to through form by taking up the systems of her subject matter as the basis for each project. As a result, her work takes absurdist turns as they echo the dysfunctionality of oil data or the drama of sleep training.
Allison has been exhibited across North America at spaces including the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, NurtureART in Brooklyn, and the Wattis Gallery in San Francisco. Her pedagogical and community-engaged projects have been manifested with various collaborators and in a variety of public spaces. Allison is currently based in Iowa City, Iowa, on the ancestral lands of the Báxoǰe (Iowa), Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), and Meskwaki/ Nemahahaki/ Sakiwaki (Sac and Fox). She holds a PhD in Art Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts, and a BFA in Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University. She is an Assistant Professor and Area Coordinator for the Art Education Program at the University of Iowa.
Matilda (Tillie) Currington-Rowe is a young artist who works in all media, though she prefers painting and sculpture. She attends Alice’s Rainbow Preschool and enjoys rocks and gems.
Website: allisonroweart.com
Instagram: @allisonvrowe