Originally published in The Voice of San Francisco in September 2024
500 Capp Street Presents New Exhibitions in September
This fall, David Ireland’s former home turned art space, 500 Capp Street, will host the work of iconic bay area artist Mildred Howard and a multifaceted installation by Annie Albagli.
David Ireland
As an environment and living artwork, Ireland’s home at 500 Capp Street became not just a dwelling but also an idiosyncratic assemblage of his creative vision. Ireland came to be a full-time artist at the age of forty. After spending time in New York, Ireland returned to San Francisco and became a part of the Bay Area Conceptual movement which included artists like Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Tony Labat and Jim Melchert. The group helped establish San Francisco as a key location in conceptual art through video, performance and installation art.
Home Turned Living Artwork
All of these experiences informed David Ireland’s site-specific installation pieces consisting of everyday objects that explore ideas of place and transformation utilizing everything from phone books to cement to discarded furniture. When he bought the Victorian home on 500 Capp St. in 1975, he applied his sense of minimalism and absurdity to transform the space. By exploring the beauty of everyday things, Ireland became an accessible conceptual artist for audiences that wouldn’t normally have the patience for the medium.
Twentieth century art has a rich history of artists wanting to become a part of their own work, artists like Joseph Beuys whose conceptual installation “I like America and America Likes Me” (1974) consisted of the artist living in a performance space for three days with a coyote. Marcel Duchamp, whose art and wry humor influenced Ireland’s methodologies, also believed in merging art with life and said “Anything is art if the artist says it is.”
Collaborating With The Muses Part One
Over the last 50 years, Mildred Howard has been a key figure in the Bay Area art scene. In September 2024, she is launching Collaborating With The Muses Part One, a series of overlapping exhibitions at multiple venues. The exhibits will highlight the variation and scope of Howard’s multidisciplinary practice, to which large-scale sculptural installations, public artworks, and assemblages are central but which includes a wide range of mediums including print and film. The dialogue and interplay between different artistic disciplines is one of Howard’s major themes, particularly the role of music – in a behind the scenes capacity informing the artist while the creation is being executed, or as a part of the final work’s presentation.
Collaborating With The Muses begins on September 7 at Anglim/Trimble who have represented Howard for more than three decades with an exhibition featuring her large-scale photo prints. At Oakland’s pt. 2 Gallery, Howard will debut a new installation inspired by Peace Piece, a favorite composition by eminent jazz pianist Bill Evans. Hand-selected internationally known Bay area musicians will take part in this work. At 500 Capp Street, Howard will show her 2021 film “The Time and Space of Now”, paired with a partial excerpt of the large-scale installation work that accompanied the film’s premiere at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.
Milk Teeth
The dining room of the David Ireland house will transform into a meditation on where we come from with the help of artist Annie Albagli and her dreamlike artworks that consider the origins of life. A limestone sculpture covering the dining room table reaches back in time and into the fossil record to trace the web of life between sea, land and cosmos. A montage of digital art decorates the ceiling with celestial images of motherhood and mythology. An additional video work will weave in Albagli’s personal origin story and visitors, in the spirit of collaboration and transformation, will be able to add their own stories to the installation, sending them via fax to a machine stationed in the kitchen.
As part of the exhibition, Albagli is organizing several public events and exhibition activations. On September 26th there will be a premiere of a collective performance score by artist Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. On Sunday, October 19, Albagli and fellow artists from UNIDEE’s Neither on Land Nor on Sea residency join together for an online and in person interactive event in which both artists and audience are invited to share speculative stories about objects, materials, and place.