SAVANNAH, GA.- The exhibition ‘Journey Elsewhere: Musings from a Boundless Zoo’ takes place as part of
SCAD deFINE ART 2016, the seventh annual program of fine art exhibitions, lectures, performances and public events organized by Savannah College of Art and at SCAD locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia and Hong Kong.
“Journey Elsewhere: Musings from a Boundless Zoo” is a multi-venue exhibition by SCAD alumnus Lavar Munroe with recent works that explore his ongoing interest in the phenomena of the “human zoo” in place during colonial times, and its impact on the politics of representation in the present. A series of new large-scale works and drawings are on view in the Gutstein Gallery, including an installation that engages personal biography and references his childhood in the Bahamas. Three significant works recently included in the 56th Venice Biennale also are on display in the SCAD Museum of Art.
Munroe’s painting practice incorporates elements of assemblage and collage, with composite pieces stitched and glued into a larger whole. Anthropomorphic figures that vacillate between the playful and macabre are the central motifs of his large-scale canvases. Often incorporating found and discarded materials, Munroe creates rich, painterly works that foreground his interest in history, anthropology and sociology. The exhibitions is curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, SCAD head curator of exhibitions.
Lavar Munroe (B.F.A. illustration), born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1982, is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, installation art and a hybrid medium that straddles the line between sculpture and painting. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007, Munroe earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 2013.
Munroe represented the Bahamas at the 2010 Liverpool Biennial, a contemporary visual arts event in the United Kingdom. In 2013, the New American Paintings periodical selected him as the editor’s choice artist.
He is also an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, where he did a residency in Skowhegan, Maine, and he has been awarded prizes including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant; a National Endowment for the Arts grant; a Fountainhead Residency; and the Mildred Suliburk Dennis Memorial Scholarship. Other grants and fellowships were awarded from organizations including the Krause Family Foundation, the Savannah Beach Institute, the Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, the Mary Beth Hassan Fund and The Central Bank of The Bahamas, among others. Munroe was also selected as a finalist for the Headlands Center for the Arts Chiaro Award in 2014.
He was a participant of the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, and he has exhibited in institutions including the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri; The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas in Nassau; and the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina. His work is represented by Jack Bell Gallery based in London, England, and Nomad Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Munroe lives and works in Washington, D.C., and Nassau, Bahamas.
