Never underestimate the power of force and irreverent, obsessive imagination. South Bay Contemporary is proud to present walking upstream, a group exhibition at The Loft Gallery in San Pedro that showcases six artists who defy traditional approaches to creating art:

Christine Weir
Clare Graham
Joan Robey
Susan Sironi
Tracey Weiss
Vincent Tomczyk

Unlike the grooves in a record that repeat the same refrain, these artists bump the needle to disrupt and surprise, walking upstream and pushing the boundaries of their media with rigorous innovation: they cut, mark, layer, repurpose, wire, redact and string together their creations through exhaustive and often playful transformation.

Disregarding convention, the resulting work feels alive with the self-assured conjuring of the hand and the power to engage second and third looks. walking upstream, co-curated by Monica Wyatt and David Lovejoy, features a deliberate and painstaking inversion of predictable processes, taking the viewer on a magical journey down a path of transformation and invention.

Curators’ Thoughts

“Our initial concept for this exhibition was to reference the phrase, ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same.’ But while selecting artists and visiting their studios, we were struck by the intensity of process in which all these mark-makers create. None takes the road well-traveled. Instead, the artists in walking upstream transform their materials through rigorous craftsmanship, vision and the devotion to an idea to which there is no benchmark.”—Monica Wyatt and David Lovejoy