Anya Gallaccio
surf’s up, 2011
7540 Fay Avenue
Anya Gallaccio's mural, surf’s up, is a photographic image produced using a scanning electron microscope to look closely at a single grain of sand from the California coast. Looking at the dirt under our feet reveals another world, a landscape that we can never visit. A landscape of our mind, or of possibility, which Gallaccio's sees as an integral part of the experience of life in Southern California; a land of possibilities, of dreams. This billboard image mirrors the mythological and elemental properties of California living. Daydreams, darkness and isolation can accompany sunshine…the title, surf’s up, refers to a song by the Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson, himself a virtual shut-in for years, in a land where the sun never stops shining.
Anya Gallaccio emerged in the late 1980s as part of a group of young British artists trained at Goldsmiths, University of London. Born in 1963 in Paisley, Scotland she was educated at Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College, London. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. Gallaccio creates site-specific installations, often using organic materials as her medium. Her work is preoccupied with the nature of change through the passage of time. Past projects have included arranging one ton of oranges on a floor, placing a thirty-two ton block of ice in a boiler room, and painting a room with chocolate. The nature of these materials results in natural processes of transformation and decay, often with unpredictable results.
Since her first appearance in the historic 1988 Frieze exhibition, she has become established internationally, having exhibited at the SculptureCenter, New York; the Palazzo Piccolomini delle Papesse, Siena, Italy; the Camden Arts Centre, London; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. As one of the leading British sculptors of her generation, Anya Gallaccio was short-listed for the Turner Prize and received the prestigious Sculpture Commission for the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain in 2003. Gallaccio lives and works in San Diego, California and London, England.
13' 9" x 47' 3"
Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann