Hannah Epstein & Kevin McNamee-Tweed
Art Brussels, Discovery Section. Booth D23
April 25–28, 2019
Steve Turner is pleased to present a two person booth at Art Brussels 2019 featuring hooked rugs by Hannah Epstein and ceramic relief paintings by Kevin McNamee-Tweed. Both artists use humble materials and handicraft skills to create works that resemble those made by folk or outsider artists—but they are not. They are part of a movement away from technology and new media yet they retain conceptual rigor and a societal/political purpose, making their iteration of folk art something new, something more than merely naive or primitive art for its own sake. By incorporating techniques and skills from the past to put forward current concerns and issues, both artists have found a way to refashion the “old” into something new, thereby tangibly linking the present to the past in fresh and engaging ways.
Epstein grew up in remote Nova Scotia and later went to college in even more remote Newfoundland where she studied folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland (2009). After getting her MFA at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh (2017), she added conceptual rigor to her practice and became, as she calls herself, “a feminist folklorist of the internet age.” She has had two solo exhibitions with Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2018 & 2019). Later this year, Epstein’s work will be included in three museum exhibitions with group exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, Newfoundland followed by her first solo museum exhibition at Penn State University.
Kevin McNamee-Tweed grew up in North Carolina before studying at New York University where he earned a BFA (2008). After living in Austin, Texas for seven years, he moved to Iowa City to enroll in the MFA program at the University of Iowa where he will earn an MA (2019) and an MFA (2020). He has had solo exhibitions at The Still House Group, New York (2016); Rod Barton, London (2017); Shrine Gallery, New York (2018); Devening Projects, Chicago (2019) and will soon have his first solo exhibition at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2019). He creates works in a range of media–glazed ceramic paintings, monotypes, drawings and artist books–and his studio practice is informed by his wry sense of humor and his affinity with American flyover states.
