Bannister Gallery 2023-24 Exhibitions

Rhode Island College 2-D Faculty Exhibition

• August 31–September 22, 2023
• Opening Reception: Thursday, August 31, 4–6 pm

Watch the Artist Talk with Stephen Fisher

Bannister Gallery opens the 2023-24 exhibition schedule with our Annual Faculty Exhibition, which offers an opportunity for the community to experience first-hand the artistic talent that is in residence at Rhode Island College. These faculty artists are integral to the current aesthetic and conceptual dialogues present in our studio art department. Their practices include research-based and interdisciplinary methods that are at the core of contemporary art. RIC’s faculty artists exhibit widely and receive prestigious awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. As a result, they encourage students by their example to think across boundaries. Collectively, these distinguished, award-winning artists bring a unique vision to the region’s cultural tapestry.

Shared Distance: Where the Links Flow
Chun Hua Catherine Dong

• October 5–27, 2023
• Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, October 5, 4–6 pm

Featuring virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 3D-printed sculptures, video installation, and AI-generated visuals, Shared Distance: Where the Links Flow provides an insight into the recent creations of Chun Hua Catherine Dong, a multimedia artist based in Montreal. This exhibition takes viewers into a journey where art and technology collide, examining how digital diasporic experiences have shaped the notion of home and self with the rise of digitalization. The artist weaves the complexities of displacement, resilience, childhood memories, and the longing for connection into a thread that links geographic, cultural, and emotional distances, as well as bridges gaps between memories and experiences, the tangible and the virtual, and culture and nature through the lens of gender and the context of diaspora.

Amy Montali: Thief

• November 9–December 8, 2023
• Opening Reception: Thursday, November 9, 4–7 pm
• Artist Talk and Closing Reception: Monday, December 11, 4–5 pm, ALEX AND ANI Hall Room 138

Amy Montali, RIC Professor of Art, presents a selection of new large-scale photographs. This long-term project explores states of mind and emotion in relation to landscape and light. Working with friends and acquaintances, Montali invents pictures for the camera on site in real time, using the visual and psychological elements each situation provides.

Graphic Design: Konkuk University

• January 18–February 9, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, January 18, 4–6 pm

We are happy to welcome Graphic Design: Konkuk University back to Bannister Gallery for the first time since 2020! Facilitated by Rhode Island College Graphic Design Professor Heemong Kim, Graphic Design: Konkuk University features selected works from graduating students studying at Konkuk University in Chungju, South Korea. The university’s objective is to develop creative designers aware of their social responsibilities through an understanding of humanity, society, technology, philosophy and culture.

Range of Motion, Landscapes by Charles Goolsby

• February 22–March 22, 2024
• Artist Talk: Thursday, February 22, 4–5 pm, Alex and Ani Hall 138
• Opening Reception: Thursday, February 22, 5–7 pm, in the gallery

Charles Goolsby’s oil paintings of landscapes reside between complete stillness and sweeping gestural chaos, specific place and fiction, rendered realism and ambiguous abstraction, and physical object and illusionary pictorial space. Within these dichotomies, his images result in visual expressions of beauty, familiarity, liminal transitions, and anxiety. His landscape imagery builds on 19th century American landscape painting traditions and implies a sense of contemporary issues including climate change, landscape transformation as a commodity to be consumed, and an effort to raise awareness that we, as humans, are often finding ourselves in isolation interacting with our locations. This exhibition was curated by Professor Richard Whitten.

Paper Trails: Selections from the RIC Print Trade

• April 1–19, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, April 4, 4–7 pm, in the gallery

Since 2005, students and faculty of the Rhode Island College Printmaking Department have taken part in a print exchange, in which each artist creates an edition of prints to trade with the other artists involved. Unthemed and with only a set paper size as a guide, exchange participants create innovative and unique prints that add to or start their classmates’ own art collections. Curated by RIC Alumnus Sam Nehila '19, this exhibition digs into the past and traces common trends in subject matter as well as the range of technical experimentation of RIC printmakers throughout the years.

2024 Graduating Art Students' Exhibition

• May 2–17, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, May 2, 4–7 pm, in the gallery

The Bannister Gallery is pleased to present its annual exhibition of work by graduating seniors in the Art Department. Various studio concentrations represented include ceramics, metalsmithing, painting, printmaking, digital media, graphic design, photography and sculpture. Degrees earned through the Art Department include a BS in Art Education, a BFA in Art Education, a BA in Art History, a BA in Art Studio, and a BFA in Art Studio, the latter of which requires students to develop a stylistically accomplished and conceptually focused body of work.