Eyes Wide Open: Surveillance Series at The Kranzberg Gallery Frequent use of digital technology like cell phones and computers plays such a seductive, pervasive role in my life (and nearly everyone’s), especially during this pandemic. Embracing the latest news, message, app, or software, I capture, link and distribute what interests me. Also constant, but less obvious in our lives, are networks of digital surveillance that invade our privacy with virtually every online activity. In tandem, surveillance by digital cameras has proliferated, providing an endless loop of doubtful examination and ultimately revealing critical threats to freedom, civil liberty and identity privacy.
Among the targets of relentless surveillance are our email, phone calls, texting, online activities like personal finances, photographs, social media and business communications, political preferences, and location/movement tracking services.
My art looks back at these government, corporate, and personal cameras --especially at the vast insertion of surveillance cameras into the natural world --and focuses on the secretive relationship between subject and spectator.
Among the targets of relentless surveillance are our email, phone calls, texting, online activities like personal finances, photographs, social media and business communications, political preferences, and location/movement tracking services.
My art looks back at these government, corporate, and personal cameras --especially at the vast insertion of surveillance cameras into the natural world --and focuses on the secretive relationship between subject and spectator.
Eyes Wide Open: Privacy Matters Blog post for Eyes Wide Open: Surveillance Series at The Kranzberg Arts Foundation.
The word surveillance comes from sur (French, -over) veiller (French, -watch; Latin, vigilare – to keep watch): literally, to watch over. My hope is to increase awareness of government/corporate intrusion into our personal and civic lives.
The word surveillance comes from sur (French, -over) veiller (French, -watch; Latin, vigilare – to keep watch): literally, to watch over. My hope is to increase awareness of government/corporate intrusion into our personal and civic lives.
Interview with Yale Radio 2020 Margaret Keller talks about her environmental art, her research into endangered and threatened species, her activism, and alternative art spaces in the St. Louis region.
The Mitchell Museum Catalog: Margaret Keller's Leaning on Nature This 16 page color catalog discusses Keller's one-person exhibition, Leaning on Nature, at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst, written by Director of Visual Arts Rusty Freeman. Exhibition February 22 through April 26, 2020. Mt. Vernon, Illinois
Podcast Critical Mass Five Questions: Margaret Keller 5 Questions interviews creatives, including Margaret Keller, with connections to St. Louis. By design, a set of unusual questions is asked. The intention is to dig a little deeper, to get at the previously undiscovered, the weird, and perhaps the uncanny. The questions are as follows:
Why do you do this to yourself? Why art?
Which one of your works is most likely to end up in a suburban basement?
What needs to happen here in St. Louis?
What do you wish someone would ask you about your work?
What’s your end game?
Why do you do this to yourself? Why art?
Which one of your works is most likely to end up in a suburban basement?
What needs to happen here in St. Louis?
What do you wish someone would ask you about your work?
What’s your end game?
Botanica absentia at Contemporary Art Museum Botanica absentia is a memorial to extinct tree species, set seventy years in the future after climate change has forced most living organisms into either mutation or extinction. Along with a replica limb from the now-extinct Cercis canadensis, redbud tree, stretching overhead, an archive wall of stainless-steel tags commemorates 72 extinct tree species out of the thousands lost; opposite hangs an image of the last, living redbud tree. My installation is an attempt to communicate that at this present moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong.
Review of Botanica absentia at Contemporary Art Museum Review of Margaret Keller's Botanica absentia in delicious line 1/3/2020
St. Louis artist creates an exquisite, devastating memorial for a future in which trees are extinct Review of Margaret Keller's Botanica absentia by Jeannette Cooperman for St. Louis Magazine 9 /23/2019
Extreme Curiosity: The Contagious Nature of Possibility in Margaret Keller’s Art Review of Margaret Keller's The Space Between at The William and Florence Schmidt Art Center by Matt Derouin for Alive Magazine 7/7/2019
Botanica absentia - Lost Words Review of Margaret Keller's Botanica absentia at The Contemporary Art Museum in The Webster-Kirkwood Times by Will Frank 11/22/2019
Regional Arts Commission Fellowship to Margaret Keller The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis (RAC) has awarded their $20,000 fellowship to Margaret Keller, as one of ten local artists, as part of its annual Artist Fellowship program for 2019. With this sixth round of grants, RAC has now awarded a total of $1.2 million to help regional artists further their artistic careers.
Yale Radio 2019 Margaret Keller talks about her series Riverbend, The Space Between, and Surveillance, all works where she examines the nature of looking and our relationship to both the environment and technology.
St. Louis Gets a Shiny New River at The Arch Review of Margaret Keller's Riverbend sculpture at The Gateway Arch by Valerie Schremp Hahn. 9/21/2018
New Public Art coming to the Gateway Arch National Park A new public art installation, Riverbend, by Margaret Keller is coming to the Gateway Arch National Park in September. Riverbend represents the navigable Missouri River as the symbolic Gateway to the West and as the main route west taken by Lewis and Clark, as well as by the settlers who followed them. By literally reflecting all people, this silver, mirror-finish artwork will include and honor all viewers.
Critical Mass Selects Margaret Keller for Public Works Commission Margaret Keller has been awarded the $10,000 Critical Mass Public Works Project Commission for her art installation Riverbend, to be located at The Gateway Arch National Park in September. The approximately 100-foot-long artwork represents the navigable Missouri River, highlighting it as the primary means of Westward Expansion and Gateway to the West. Made of reflective, mirror-like material, Riverbend will orient to the actual course of the Missouri, starting at its confluence with the Mississippi.
Public access will be from any point, to walk, bike, run, play or just sit. Literally a river of brilliant, changing light, Riverbend will activate the space, spark dialogue and generate community, as it literally reflects and includes the audience, along with their movement, through the site. A podcast will invite listeners to share their stories of the river.
Public access will be from any point, to walk, bike, run, play or just sit. Literally a river of brilliant, changing light, Riverbend will activate the space, spark dialogue and generate community, as it literally reflects and includes the audience, along with their movement, through the site. A podcast will invite listeners to share their stories of the river.
Margaret Keller: Finalists for Critical Mass Public Works Honored to be selected as one of three Finalists for the Critical Mass Public Works commission for 2018
Center for Contemporary Art Margaret Keller's Arch City series painting.
Delicious Line Review Review by Margaret Keller of Amy Sherald's exhibition at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
temporaryartreview Temporary Art Review is a platform for contemporary art criticism that focuses on alternative spaces and critical exchange among disparate art communities. Temporary is an international network, highlighting both practical and theoretical discourse through reviews, interviews, essays and profiles on artist-centered spaces and projects.
The Luminary Manifesto for an art organization we can live in and with
I. To critique by building. We must build conscious alternatives to the world as we experience it: sustainable structures that support artists, support ourselves, and model a world we want to see embodied more broadly.
II. To embody and enact structures that are sustainable, just, conceptual and diverse in idea, manifestation and act.
IV. To hold money as a tool to be used and a horizon to be overcome. The methods of accessing money should be ethical...
V. To view art as a start, not the end.
VI. To understand our place in complex politics, ecologies and communities within and beyond art. The precarity within art does not exempt us ....
VII. To consider the intersectional implications of our actions in the Anthropocene, in America, in an evolving present. Injustice has no place....
VIII. To age well, to sustain or end well.
IX. To create a continuity of history.
I. To critique by building. We must build conscious alternatives to the world as we experience it: sustainable structures that support artists, support ourselves, and model a world we want to see embodied more broadly.
II. To embody and enact structures that are sustainable, just, conceptual and diverse in idea, manifestation and act.
IV. To hold money as a tool to be used and a horizon to be overcome. The methods of accessing money should be ethical...
V. To view art as a start, not the end.
VI. To understand our place in complex politics, ecologies and communities within and beyond art. The precarity within art does not exempt us ....
VII. To consider the intersectional implications of our actions in the Anthropocene, in America, in an evolving present. Injustice has no place....
VIII. To age well, to sustain or end well.
IX. To create a continuity of history.
