Billi London-Gray and Daniel Gray, City of God, Native-wood charcoal and gunpowder on concrete block, ashe juniper, sound and digital video, 136 x 109 x 62 inches, 2015.
Daniel and Billi-London Gray at Gallery 2
For the last several years, collaborative married couple Daniel Gray and Billi London-Gray, a nomadic pair of artists, have called San Marcos home despite a schedule peppered with stints in artists’ residencies around the United States. For their latest venture the couple was invited to live and work in the Petrified Forest National Park and the result of their time there is the subject of Displacement, on view through July 26 at Gallery 2 in San Marcos.
“The City of God” installation also includes a poem created from the individual words of a historical monument on the ground of the park, though the placard probably reads something heroic and conclusive, the constructed poem is dark and elusive. The esoteric use of text in these pieces seems to further push the obscurity of the artist’s actual thoughts on the show’s theme.
Being an American of any kind carries baggage in the form of the knowledge that whatever you enjoy you enjoy thanks to a systematic and widespread displacement of many people who previously staked claim to this land. For many generations, land has changed hands from the indigenous to the explorers, from pilgrims to governments, to even more governments and so on, forever and ever. Being surrounded by the artificially created boundaries of a pristine national park surely evoked the looming question, who was displaced and why? The obvious answer in the southwest is, of course, the native peoples of the southwest, and the Grays smartly point out the fabrication of the idea of the “noble savage” through the visual culture of the new American southwest in their video work.
Displacement will be on view at Gallery 2 in San Marcos at the Joan Cole Mitte School of Art and Design through July 26th. Gallery hours are Monday-Sunday 9AM – 10PM.