Past Exhibitions 2023-2024

Rhode Island College 2-D Faculty Exhibition

Black-and-white drawing of a still life — Stephen Fisher, *Rabbit Hole*, 2023, charcoal, graphite, Prismacolor and inkwash, 18"x19"

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

Photograph of a woman seated next to an AI-generated image of a landscape — Chun Hua Catherine Dong, *For You, I Will Be an Island*, 2023, photograph with AI-generated component. Image courtesy of the artist.

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

Women standing in a yard with a white house and shed nearby — Amy Montali, *thief*, 2021, 30"x40" archival inkjet print from 4"x5" color film

November 9-December 8, 2023
Opening Reception – Thursday, November 9th, 4-7 PM
Artist Talk and Closing Reception - Monday, December 11th, 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

Person holding up a black-and-white poster with Korean text

January 18-February 9, 2024
Opening Reception - Thursday, January 18th, 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

Painting of industrial park with reflections in shallow water — Charles Goolsby, *Industrial Park*, 2020, oil on canvas

February 22-March 22, 2024
Artist Talk - Thursday, February 22nd, 4-5 PM, Alex and Ani Hall 138
Opening Reception - Thursday, February 22nd, 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

Black and white print of a wall with scaffolding — Michael Baribault, *Death of a Printshop*, 2014

April 1-19, 2024
Opening Reception - Thursday, April 4th, 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.