past exhibition

Ethan Murrow: Hauling

September 15, 2018–May 12, 2019

Ethan Murrow, Hauling, Sharpie pen on wall, 2018. Photograph: Stewart Clements.

Hauling is an immersive installation of hand-drawn work by artist Ethan Murrow. Created specifically for the Currier, this multifaceted installation features a series of drawings in different scales and materials that explore the universal themes of work, handcraft, and collaboration. Prominent within the installation is a massive, panoramic wall drawing. Murrow’s most ambitious work to date, the drawing was created with a team of six other artists and nearly 1,000 Sharpie pens, and it extends across more than 100 feet of gallery wall space.

Hauling is inspired by the history of the Manchester region and its people, emphasizing labor and collaboration. Murrow’s wall drawing depicts groups of figures working together to push, pull, and haul large accumulations of objects symbolic of human labor – ranging from Native American and pre-industrial hand tools to the high-tech apparatuses of the modern era. The exhibition also includes two large-scale graphite drawings on paper, depicting scenes related to elements of Manchester’s famed industrial history of the 19th and early 20th century, as well as a 52-foot-long scroll drawing animated by a mechanical sculpture. The scroll drawing depicts imagery of rope, which Murrow views as one of the most elemental hand tools, and also connects to more symbolic and universal ideas of connectivity, timelines, migration, and, of course, hauling.

Murrow worked with several artists, craftspeople, historians, and New Hampshire citizens to help research and create his expansive project.

Note: The kinetic sculpture in this exhibition is activated daily from 11 am to 1 pm.

 


Exhibition sponsor:   Hitchner Manufacturing Company, Inc.

Additional support: Gloria Wilcher Exhibition Fund

Research support: Berkshire Taconic Foundation and Tufts University

Support by:

past exhibitions

Archived material on past exhibitions can be explored further here, and recent past exhibition catalogues are available through the museum shop.

artist in residence

Our Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program invites artists to live and work at the museum. While in residence, artists consider the collection and community, and refresh our perspectives on the role of the museum. The program is central to the Currier Museum’s mission of connecting our audiences with art and creative thinking, whether of the past or the future. We hope to learn from our visiting artists – and be surprised by their perspectives.

Artists working in all media participate in the AIR program, which has three main components: 1) an open call to support emerging artists making socially engaged art; 2) an invitational through which artists are selected to develop special projects, commissions, or exhibitions; and 3) artist-led, community-centered public art projects in the city of Nashua, NH.

 

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