Montana Torrey is an American artist who employs the landscape as a metaphorical tool to investigate oppositions between and within the public and domestic spheres. Her multi-disciplinary work, which includes temporary outdoor installations, photography, painting and sculpture, explores sites of protection, paranoia, absence, and longing. Torrey has been an Artist-in-Residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Headlands Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Catwalk Institute, and the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, among others. She has a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Montana will be in Tartu for a residency of 3 months, from 05.04.2016 till 28.06.2016.
Artist Statement
I would like to use my time at Tartu Artist in Residence Program to explore the local environment, architecture and landscape to create site-specific responses to the theme of marriage/coupling/opposition/duality/pairs/union. I will invent a language that utilizes painting, sewing, embroidery, and found material to create a dialogue between ideas and physical space. My installations will address the issue of “being second” by forcing the viewer to visually experience a relationship or tension between two spaces/ideas/materials. A subtext of primary and secondary will arise out of the physical space and materials by way of inventing a dialogue between the two. My installations will be based on the theme of pairs, challenging the notion of hierarchy in binary opposition, as second implies a first; a tension or a struggle between first and second. By creating a language of pairs, I will create a psychological exploration of coupling.
Previous Works
The Afterglow (after Frederic Church), hand-painted silk organza, site-specific installation Catwalk Institute, Catskill, NY, various dimensions
Victory Over the Sun, documentation of performance/ painting, Skagaströnd, Iceland
Everyman’s Law, site-specific installation, Hämeenkyrö, Finland, printed silk organza signs
We Buy Gold, site-specific installation, Hämeenkyrö, Finland, hand-cut tarpaulins, various dimensions
We Buy Gold, (detail, Cash 4 You), site-specific installation, Hämeenkyrö, Finland, hand-cut tarpaulinsµ
More about Montana: www.montanatorrey.com