Home Sweet Home
Curatorial statement by Holly E. Hughes, Associate Curator, Albright-Knox Art Gallery:
I was first introduced to Victoria Bradbury’s work as a juror for the 2009 Southern Tier Biennial. For that exhibition, my co-juror Leonard Urso and I selected her captivatingly beautiful video work Ocean of Oceans: Limbs (2009) as the Best in Show recipient, a decision that resulted in her contributions to this solo installation.
Bradbury’s work mediates the ground between history and contemporary media. Her part-sculptural, part-cinematic, part-experimental approach to artmaking weaves a narrative that simultaneously engages the past, present, and future. Home Sweet Home, a multimedia installation culled from digital prints, live Internet foreclosure headlines, video stills, and a handmade quilt as well as other small, embroidered pieces, employs the pioneer figure as an observer to censure the nation’s current housing crisis and two of the hardest-hit-states: Florida and Arizona. While these regions have been continuously weathering the impact of the housing fallout, other states like Ohio and Michigan have also been affected, despite not seeing a huge housing price increate in recent years. One can argue that, unlike past housing crises, this one is undeniably universal in nature—rendering Bradbury’s work an even more effectually potent commentary.
[...]Bradbury’s most recent work leaves us questioning, is home still where the heart is?
With current headlines boasting both “crisis” and “solution,” we are led to believe that the end of the current housing dilemma is near. This leaves me to wonder, is the effervescent nature of the American economy leading us to believe that the notion of “home” is also on the decline? Bradbury’s work creates a space in which home is both history and memory, thwarted by insecurity and external conditions. Maya Angelou once said, “You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.”
Hughes, Holly E. in “Home Sweet Home, Victoria Bradbury 2010", ed. Anne Conroy-Baiter, (Olean NY: The Cattaraugus County Arts Council, 2010).