Southern Exposure (art space)
Encyclopedia
About
Southern Exposure (SoEx) is a not-for-profit arts organizationNot-for-profit arts organization
A not-for-profit arts organization is usually in the form of a not-for-profit corporation, association, or foundation. Such organizations are formed for the purpose of developing and promoting the work of artists in various visual and performing art forms such as film, sculpture, dance, painting,...
and alternative art space founded in 1974 in the Mission District of San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
.
As a visual arts organization, SoEx's mission is to present diverse, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs in an accessible environment. SoEx supports artists and youth — whether they are teaching, exhibiting, curating, or learning — in developing and presenting new work and ideas. SoEx aims to continually evolve in response to the needs of artists and the community, engaging the public in the artists’ work. SoEx's activities range from the commissioning and presentation of local, regional, and international visual artists’ work through exhibitions, public art projects, arts education programs, grants, residencies, lectures, discussions, performances, and workshops.
Exhibitions
SoEx provides artists the chance to experiment, exposes them to new audiences and engages them in meaningful conversation with other artists and the public. It gives artists the freedom to experiment in new contexts and media that will allow them to push their creative development. Through solo and group exhibitions and public art projects SoEx cultivates artists whose work shows great promise, questions and challenges existing assumptions and contributes to a cultural dialog.Southern Exposure's exhibition program is curated by a committee of artists from the community and include solo shows, group shows, and juried
Juried (competition)
A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts, either by the competition's stated rubric or by a subjective set of criteria dependent upon the nature of the competition or the...
shows. Artists that have shown at Southern Exposure include Harrell Fletcher
Harrell Fletcher
Harrell Fletcher is an American artist in Portland, Oregon who creates socially engaged interdisciplinary projects.-Early work:While completing his degree at California College of Arts and Crafts, Fletcher began collaborating with artist Jon Rubin...
, Lee Walton
Lee Walton
Lee Walton is an American artist whose work includes drawing, concept based systems, performance, video art, net art, and public projects.-Academic career:...
, Glowlab
Glowlab
Glowlab was an artist-run initiative that produced and presented experimental work related to cities and psychogeography, including interactive artworks and projects, events, exhibitions, and artists' gatherings. Brooklyn artist and curator Christina Ray launched Glowlab in 2002 as an experimental,...
, Neighborhood Public Radio
Neighborhood Public Radio
Neighborhood Public Radio is an independent, artist-run radio project committed to providing an alternative media platform for artists, activists, musicians, and community members. The group was founded in 2005, is based out of Oakland, California...
, Packard Jennings
Packard Jennings
Packard Jennings is an American artist who appropriates pop culture symbols and references to create new meaning using a variety of media including printmaking, sculpture, animation, video, and pamphleteering. In his early career he modified billboards, a common practice of culture jammers...
, Amy Balkin
Amy Balkin
Amy Balkin is an American artist who studied at Stanford University and is now located in San Francisco. Her work 'combines cross-disciplinary research and social critique to generate ambitious, bold, and innovative ways of conceiving the public domain outside current legal and discursive systems.'...
, Red 76
Red 76
Red 76 is a multi-artist collective started in Portland, Oregon. Since 2000 they have produced numerous projects and appeared in The New York Times, Art Forum and Modern Painters, and shown at Southern Exposure and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and in projects by Creative Time.-Themes:Red 76's...
, Jon Rubin
Jon Rubin
Jon Rubin is an American artist living and working in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He's also professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His work "explores the social dynamics of public places and the idiosyncrasies of individual and group behavior."...
, Ann Chamberlain, David Ireland
David Ireland (artist)
David Kenneth Ireland was an American artist and co-founder of the artist residency.Born in Bellingham, Washington, he studied Printmaking and Industrial Arts at California College of Arts and Crafts, prior to joining the Army in the early 1950s...
, Alex Kahn
Alex Kahn
Alex Kahn is an American visual and performance artist, best known for his creation of the large-scale puppet performance works that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade each year.-Pageant Puppetry and Processional Art:...
, Amy Franceschini
Amy Franceschini
Amy Franceschini is a contemporary American artist and designer. Her practice spans a broad range of media including drawing, sculpture, design, net art, public art and gardening.She is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow....
, Michael Swaine, Christian Maychack, Scott Oliver, Whitney Lynn, Stephanie Syjuco
Stephanie Syjuco
Stephanie Syjuco is mixed-media conceptual artist based in San Francisco. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Stanford University . Her works tend to mix the familiar consumer world with natural worlds or imagined future worlds...
, and others.
Each year, SoEx has a juried exhibition with an open call. The show is curated by a respected international curator (past curaotrs of the annual exhibition have included Magali Arriola , Tom Finkelpearl, and Kristan Kennedy , There is no fee for artists to submit their work for review.
Artists in Education
SoEx's Artists in Education (AIE) program provides intensive art education programs to hundreds of underserved youth each year through in-school, after-school, and summer arts programs. SoEx provides teaching opportunities for artists and connects these artists to youth to provide critical and conceptual models for addressing the challenges of urban life.Grant Programs
One of SoEx's main goals is to support the professional development of artists so they are able to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alternative Exposure, SoEx’s grant program, provides more than $50,000 of grants each year to individuals who work to promote other artists through exhibition spaces, publications, websites, critical writing and other activities.Public Art
Since moving from Project Artaud in 2006, Southern Exposure has supported "offsite" projects which happen in the city of San Francisco. SoEx's supported projects include rebargroup which mapped and used San Francisco's privately-owned public spaces.SoEx Off-Site commissions new temporary work throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that intervenes and interacts in the social and political spheres beyond the gallery. Public art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
is the newest addition to our programmatic agenda, and SoEx is one of only a few venues committed to supporting emerging artists working in the public realm.