JUNK PIRATE
Pete Glover
(May 29-July 4, 2010)
First Friday Reception: Friday July 2nd, 7-10pm
Tea & Artist Talk: Saturday, July 3th, 3-6pm
The roots of exhibitions in America rest deeply on the notion of collecting and collections. Pete Glover’s upcoming art exhibition, Junk Pirate, harks back to a time when Charles W. Peale’s American Museum began displaying a variety of items that were considered random objects of novelty. By presenting seemingly disparate objects from everyday life, Glover manages to form a cohesive and amusing gaze into American culture.
Pete Glover is an artist, a curator, a thrift store employee, and a pirate of junk. Sifting through piles of discarded commodities requires a keen eye and an aesthetic for artistic relationships, and Glover is constantly curating his carefully selected boon. Collecting is a process that relies as much upon chance discoveries as it does on incisive gathering. Over the past half decade, “Junk Pirate” has manifested into a zine, a blog, a website, and a self-published book, all of which document and put various aspects of Glover’s collections on display.
Beginning May 29th, 2010, the Compound Gallery in Oakland will exhibit Pete Glover’s Junk Pirate Found Art Exhibition, a collection of collections. In this solo show, assortments of commonplace items such as board game money, antiquated video game controllers, classroom pencil sharpeners, honey-bear bottles, or even found personal ephemera are exploited for their aesthetic, as well as nostalgic, properties. These arrangements of selected objects communicate with a common consumer language we all speak and often invoke the visual langue of biological and anthropological vitrines. With an obsession for the mundane and a talent for presentation, Glover’s exhibition is staged with challenging conceptual undertones to match the superficial familiar images of the everyday objects.
In addition to this polished display of hundreds of found items, Junk Pirate will feature a unique art sales method: Roll The Dice For Your Price. In a process developed during Pete Glover’s first found art exhibition in 2006, many of the framed assemblages will have their prices determined from a single roll of a predetermined set of dice. It is a transaction procedure that also, much like the exhibition itself, celebrates chance. The artist, gallery, and buyer are all duty-bound to honor the dice, which can result in some rowdy art business.
The opening reception of Pete Glover’s Junk Pirate is on Saturday, May 29th. Additional events in conjunction with the Oakland Art Murmur (on the first Friday in June and July) will feature an interactive found slide show, special discounts on Junk Pirate merchandise, and the debut of the latest issue of Junk Pirate zine.