Lindsay Costello

Review of Rebecca Brewer's "Natural Horror" at Frye Museum, Seattle, Washington.

Article on Cecilia Vicuña's retrospective at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, for the 2019/20 winter Globalism issue of Art Papers. Print and online.

The vibrancy of Marlon Mullen’s paintings beckons to every pedestrian who passes the broad windows of Adams and Ollman. The thirteen paintings included in Mullen’s solo exhibition are inspired by advertisements, as well as magazine and book covers running the gamut from Artforum and Art in America to knitting and cooking publications. Mullen finds these visual references in the library at Nurturing Independence Through Artistic Development (NIAD), a Richmond, California ar...

Critical Viewing is a free monthly online article and that can include but is not limited to; art exhibitions, performances, readings, lectures and artist talks, fundraisers, popups, film screenings, and social practice projects. Critical Viewing is a collaboration between Lindsay Costello & Ashley Gifford that began in May 2019 in conjunction with Art & About. We also occasionally print seasonal publications.

This season’s edition is by Lindsay Costello.

We also included a PDF link at the bo...

At the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, an exhibition and corresponding series of events has centered the multiplicity of voices surrounding sex work. No Human Involved: the 5th Annual Sex Workers’ Art Show features a range of artworks made exclusively by sex workers. The show was co-curated by Roya Amirsoleymani of PICA and Kat Salas and Matilda Bickers of STROLL, a Portland-based harm reduction, outreach, and education group run by and for sex workers. In tand...

PORTLAND—No Human Involved: the 5th Annual Sex Workers’ Art Show subverts homogenized narratives of sex work by showcasing critically engaged artworks by sex workers. NHI was collaboratively curated by Roya Amirsoleymani, the Artistic Director and Curator for Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), and Kat Salas and Matilda Bickers of STROLL PDX, a harm reduction, outreach, and education group run by and for sex workers. The exhibition’s title reclaims the derogatory slang term No Hum...

Sarah Wertzberger’s Color Vision glows in Holding Contemporary’s low-lit space. The artist’s intricate woven works are dizzyingly complex, yet locate a delicate balance between moderation and excess. Color Vision is comprised of eleven brightly-hued weavings, ranging in size and technique used (some pieces are hand woven, while others were woven with a digital Jacquard loom.) The exhibition focuses on a curated selection...

September Art Happenings in Portland, Oregon.

The Time-Based Art Festival (TBA), Portland Institute For Contemporary Art’s annual ten-day festival of performance, music, food, film, workshops, lectures, and late-night events, is renowned for its intensity and commitment to the experimental. This year, amidst a strong calendar of diverse performances, two pieces, ALL – a physical poem of protest and Water Will (in Melody), stood out as engrossing contributions to the ever-evolving medium.
Oslo-based choreographer Mia Habib purp...

A red glow hovers over the works in Jane Wong’s exhibition After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. The lighting choice seems artificial, particularly when cast over Wong’s installations of plastic “Thank You” bags, fake flowers, and snack food packaging. Yet it also feels warm and comforting. This duality is emblematic of the intertwined territories Wong navigates in her work.

Wong is a Seattle-based artist and poet whose creative an...

Aggregate article of notable Portland, Oregon contemporary arts happenings for July/August 2019.

At Erickson Gallery in Portland, Oregon, artist Meredith Hamm’s We Are Shapes explores matter as an expression of energy through a series of fiber sculptures and ink drawings. Hamm asserts that the flow of matter can be embodied in physical form, or through emotion, sensation, and other intangible human experiences.

In ‘Plane of Scattered Pasts’ at Upfor Gallery in Portland, Oregon, artists Heidi Schwegler and Quayola explore object histories and the fragmentation process with sculptural works and video. Schwegler amends, recasts, and highlights aged objects to reframe their value. Quayola’s video piece ‘Strata #1’ (2008) invigorates the exhibition with immersive sound and vivid colour. While the show focuses on the fragmented form, ‘Plane of Scattered Pasts’ is conceptually complete.
Upon entry, the exh...

Aggregate article of notable Portland, Oregon contemporary arts happenings in June 2019.

In What Was Always Yours and Never Lost, Ho-Chunk/Pechanga filmmaker Sky Hopinka curates a diverse selection of film and video works that shine a light on the contemporary Indigenous experience. The exhibition at Yale Union, which will also be featured at this year’s Whitney Biennial, consists of films that explore native identity within and beyond colonial history. Some engage with semiotics, resulting in an experience of collaged sounds rather than direct language translations. Others focus...