Beginning 4 November, ‘Accidental Records’ is Ellen Gallagher’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Comprising a suite of new works that includes paintings and drawings, the exhibition finds Gallagher returning to and building upon themes and motifs at the center of her practice.

The works in the exhibition extend her exploration of the complex histories of the Black Atlantic and the afterlives of the Middle Passage. Widely acclaimed for her own genre of history painting, Gallagher questions accepted geographies. The layered surfaces of her works become a kind of reckoning, evoking, in the artist’s words, ‘the way sailors mark their location at sea, determined by return.’

On view through 28 January, ‘Accidental Records’ will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring texts from Adrienne Edwards, Curator at Performa and Walker Art Center, and Philip Hoare, a writer whose books include ‘Leviathan, or the whale,’ ‘The Sea Inside’ and, most recently, ‘RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR.’ Edwards addresses themes of portraiture and performance while Hoare considers Gallagher’s work in relation to the greater scope of marine and whaling history.

About the Artist

Ellen Gallagher (b. 1965, Providence, Rhode Island) lives and works in New York and Rotterdam. Gallagher has a solo exhibition opening at The Power Plant, Toronto (2018). She will also be showing a newly commissioned film installation at Prospect.4 New Orleans, Contemporary Arts Centre, New Orleans, which opens 18 November 2017. Her work was selected for the 2003 and 2015 Venice Biennale. In 2000, she was awarded the American Academy Award in Art.

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