On Saturday, April 28th, SPARC will host an opening reception for photographer Christine Burrill’s exhibition “Uprising Los Angeles: A Walk Through the Civil Unrest of 1992”.
Burrill’s show exhibits for the first time the images the artist made during the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles. The large panels show the helplessness, shock, and rage that followed the 3000 plus fires that swept Los Angeles 20 years ago.
From SPARC:
Christine Burrill reveals the wide gamut of different perspectives, from the surreal image of a burnt-out laundromat in “Spaceship Los Angeles”, to the National Guardsmen closing Venice Beach, to a Latino family selling the remains of their destroyed florist business on the sidewalk, as well as a Korean-American family sweeping up all that remains of their clothing store, elegant African-American church ladies in shock the Sunday after the big burn, and would-be gang girls flashing victory signs. More collages show LAPD officers helplessly surveying crumbled shopping centers, and the employees of Sammy’s camera sorting through charred Leica camera boxes.
Christine Burrill is an award winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and still-photographer. Burrill has spent 30 years looking at the world through the lens of a camera. In addition to her one-woman shows of photocollages in the United States, Brazil, Belgium, Sweden, Venezuela, her film work has been seen on PBS, BBC, and other networks worldwide. Los Angeles Times calls her work: “beautiful and urgent. Burrill’s images have both the intimacy of a close-up and the informational clarity of a more distanced view. Burrill works like an ethnographer, preserving images of ritual and culture, but also like a genre painter, intent on evoking the ambiance, the colors and the textures that make up everyday life (LA Times 2001).
About SPARC: SPARC is a community-based non-profit arts organization founded in 1976 by muralist Judith F. Baca, filmmaker Donna Deitch, and artist Christina Schlesinger. SPARC is dedicated to producing, presenting, and preserving public artworks in Los Angeles, nationally, and internationally. SPARC remains committed to helping individual communities find their voice, giving it public expression, and to breaking down barriers both real and perceived between communities.
For more information about SPARC visit sparcmurals.org or call 310/822-9560
Artist Reception for “Uprising Los Angeles: A Walk Through LA During the Civil Unrest of 1992”
April 28, 2012, 5-9 p.m.
685 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA
