GOLDEN SPIKE: 24 PLACES: AISLINN PENTECOST-FARREN

Runs / July 6 to July 28, 2024

Reception / Friday, July 12 from 6-9 PM

Hours: Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM

This summer, Grizzly Grizzly and Past Present Projects co-present Golden Spike: 24 Places, a solo exhibition by Aislinn Pentecost-Farren that considers the attempts and failures of geology to define the new geological era humans have created, known as the Anthropocene. As a response to that scientific attempt and to highlight the environmental impact of industry, Pentecost-Farren astutely pairs her personal collection of 19th and 20th-century commemorative plates of industrial sites with her ceramic work. Her ceramics mimic the tradition of such souvenirs but emphasize destruction and fragility, presenting a poignant yet sobering commentary on human "progress."

Pentecost-Farren, an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and public historian, began this project by studying decorative art objects that are portents of environmental catastrophe. She collected plates that commemorate early fossil fuel usage, such as a teal-rimmed candy dish commemorating a Kansas oil well. While many pieces within the collection date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, more recent items, like a 1980s plate depicting the Mitsubishi oil terminal, illustrate newer fossil fuel technologies.

Using these antique and vintage commemorative plates as inspiration, Pentecost-Farren creates a series of new ceramic sculptures in white stoneware. These new works represent geographic sites, such as a peat bog in Poland and a volcanic lake in China, that are scientifically significant in the age of the Anthropocene, the period marked by significant human impact on the Earth's ecosystem. By bringing together historic objects and her responsive ceramic series, Pentecost-Farren encourages viewers to reflect on the tradition of celebrating industrial progress and to reconsider what merits recognition and commemoration today.

Golden Spike: 24 Places is organized by Past Present Projects for Grizzly Grizzly with support from the Emerging Scholars Program of the Decorative Arts Trust and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

Artist Bio:

Aislinn Pentecost-Farren is a transdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of visual art, curatorial practice, and public history. Her current body of work sites the climate crisis in objects from the origins of the catastrophe. She takes artifacts, collections, buildings, and landscapes as the starting point for interpretation, sculpture, ceramics, publications, and public interventions. Pentecost-Farren recasts commemorative objects as witnesses and indices.

Pentecost-Farren’s practice draws on over a decade of experience working with historic sites, museums, and parks as a curator and an artist, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bartram’s Garden, Roebling Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary, Mural Arts Philadelphia, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, Hidden City Philadelphia, Glen Foerd on the Delaware, Philadelphia Lazaretto, Fairmount Park Conservancy, and the Riverfront North Partnership in Philadelphia, as well as the Arts Council of Wales (UK), Western Carolina University (NC), and Elsewhere Museum (NC). She has exhibited work at The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Vox Populi, and Practice Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and Stamps Gallery at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, Ann Arbor, MI and Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC.

Pentecost-Farren has an MFA and a Masters of Science in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.