LAND STAR: Photographs by Richard McCabe

February 23 - March 26, 2018
(Site-specific Color Study grids, Stairwell Gallery
Extended until April 15, 2018)
Stairwell & Education Galleries
(downstairs & upstairs)

The Pensacola Museum of Art is pleased to announce a pop-up exhibition - LAND STAR: Photographs by Richard McCabe. This exhibition will feature instant (Polaroid) photographs from Richard McCabe's recently released book - LAND STAR published by Aint- Bad press. Also included in the exhibition will be a series of site-specific Fuji instax color studies - made from multiple instant prints. The LAND STAR opening reception will be on February 23 - 5:30 - 7:30. At 6:00pm Mr McCabe will do a gallery talk followed by a Land Star book signing.

LAND STAR is [Richard McCabe’s] four-year photographic exploration along roads less traveled throughout the hinterlands of the American South. In 2014, [he] set out with a Polaroid Land Camera and a road map to make instant souvenirs of the place where [he] grew up and continue[s] to live. LAND STAR is an attempt to capture the vanishing vernacular signage and architecture of the region. Part journey, sojourn or road trip, and part exercise in time travel, LAND STAR offers up forty images - fleeting glimpses that aspire to weave a non-linear visual narrative. This is a Southern Gothic tale of loss, isolation, and desolation - the side effects of modernity. For [McCabe], this work represents an escape to an alternate realm, a fantastical locale, a tactile memory of a perfect world saturated in color – a place that still exists within a parallel universe far from the complicated, hyper-digitized, and gentrified world of today. (Richard McCabe)

According to Felicia E. Gail “These instant objects offer a glimpse into a photographic journey. McCabe’s instant visions from Land Star invite us to hit the road alongside him, and consider for ourselves the complex histories these sites inhabit in the American South. McCabe’s adjacent Color Studies speak to the ineffable moments that one may experience while driving and daydreaming down forgotten backroads and old, dusty highways.”