Style Visual Art Role Artist | Name Bradley McCallum Website mccallumtarry.com | |
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Born August 2, 1966 (age 57) ( 1966-08-02 ) Green Bay, WI Notable work Weights and Measures, Whitewash, Wade in the Water, Endurance Books In the Public Realm: Installations by Bradley McCallum : May 6-July 30, 2000, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of WisconsinMadison | ||
CONTACT interviews Bradley McCallum of artist duo McCallum and Tarry
Bradley McCallum (born August 2, 1966) is a conceptual artist and social activist. He is best known for his large-scale, site-specific installations made in collaboration with artist Jacqueline Tarry, with whom he has worked since 1999 in the mixed-race collaborative McCallum + Tarry. He is the Founding Director of Conjunction Arts, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that supports artists by connecting them to social justice organizations and providing fiscal sponsorship to individual artists. From March, 2014 to March, 2015 he worked as the artist-in-residence at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, where he developed a portrait project called Weights and Measures and started the Arts Initiative for International Justice. In 1998, he held a similar residency at the New York Civil Liberties Union, where he developed a project exploring police brutality. He currently works from his studio in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Contents
- CONTACT interviews Bradley McCallum of artist duo McCallum and Tarry
- McCallum Tarry
- Weights and Measures 2014 2015
- The Manhole Cover Project A Gun Legacy 1996
- Conjunction Arts
- Awards and Residencies
- Solo exhibitions
- References
CONTACT interviews Bradley McCallum of artist duo McCallum and Tarry
McCallum + Tarry
Since 1999, Bradley McCallum has worked with artist Jacqueline Tarry in the mixed-race collaborative McCallum + Tarry. Their work addresses social inequality in the United States, including homelessness, police brutality, and legacies of racial discrimination.
Weights and Measures, 2014-2015
In November, 2012, McCallum began creating a body of portraits depicting defendants standing trial before international courts titled Weights and Measures, a project he began in partnership with the Coalition for the International Criminal Court in his unique capacity as the organization’s year-long artist-in-residence. The project consists of oil paintings portraying individuals standing trial before the International Criminal Court as well as the ad hoc international tribunals that preceded it, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. According to an interview with MSNBC, the paintings are monumental formal portraits, referencing a classical, 19th-century approach to portraiture that challenges viewers to reconsider the harmful influence these powerful men had on their communities.
Currently, McCallum has completed painted portraits of Thomas Lubanga, Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, Germain Katanga, Kang Kek Iew, Nuon Chea, William Ruto, Charles Taylor, Jean-Pierre Bemba, and Fidèle Wandu.
The Manhole Cover Project: A Gun Legacy, 1996
Before the formation of the McCallum + Tarry partnership, McCallum produced several major solo works. Among the most notable is The Manhole Cover Project, a community-based public art project commissioned by the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Childhood Injury Prevention Center of Hartford, Connecticut. The artwork explored the unique role of the gun and gun violence in the history of Hartford, a city that is both the site for the original manufacturing plants of the Colt family and also experiences some of the highest rates of gun-related deaths in the United States. The project consists of 228 manhole covers cast from the melted metal of 11,194 guns confiscated by the Hartford police force from January 1, 1992 to July 31, 1996. McCallum emblazoned each manhole cover with the words “MADE FROM 172 LBS OF YOUR CONFISCATED GUNS” and the common epitaph “VINCIT QUI PATITUR,” which roughly translated can mean either “he who perseveres is victorious” or “he who suffers conquers.” The juxtaposition of the declaration of ownership with the Latin phrase, which was also the Colt family motto, ironically contrasts Hartford’s collective responsibility for its gun violence with its history of gun manufacturing. The complete project, which included recordings of local student testimony, was curated by James Rondeau and installed at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
Conjunction Arts
In 1989, McCallum started Conjunction Arts, a non-profit arts organization to support politically and socially engaged artists through fiscal sponsorship, professional development, and residency connections with social justice organizations. In 2014, Conjunction Arts partnered with the Coalition for the International Criminal Court to launch the Arts Initiative for International Justice, a unique program to connect politically and socially engaged artists to leaders in the fields of policy, diplomacy, and human rights.
McCallum curated the first exhibition for the Arts Initiative, a travelling group show titled Post Conflict that included work by prominent artists Ai Weiwei, Richard Mosse, Alfredo Jaar, Jenny Holzer, Adam Pendleton, Pieter Hugo, Lana Mesic, Daapo Reo, and a selection of African cartoonists by Creative Court. Kinz+Tillou Fine Arts in Brooklyn, NY hosted the exhibition from November, 2014 to February, 2015, and Nichido Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan hosted it from March to May, 2015. One critic described the travelling exhibition as bringing together artists “who challenge us to examine complex and layered political issues and prompt us to consider how these issues impact others through artwork that humanizes and transforms.”