H28 Focus
Various Small Fires (VSF) is pleased to present Survival Piece V Part II: Lemon Orchard Fragment, a variation of the historic 1972 installation by Helen Mayer Harrison (1929–2018) and Newton Harrison (b. 1932) – the husband and wife duo who pioneered the Ecological Art movement and have been proposing climate change solutions through their interdisciplinary, multi-modal art practice for nearly 50 years.
Survival Piece V Part II: Lemon Orchard Fragment is an interactive, self-regulating installation of citrus trees and photosynthetic lights, proposed as both a hypothetical critique and as a practical experiment, for the indoor cultivation of fruit in a possible post-agricultural future. The installation is a site-specific variation of the Harrisons’ Survival Piece V: Portable Orchard, 1972-1973, first conceived for the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX and recently recreated and exhibited at The Walker Art Center, MN in 2015.
Visitors can walk amongst the meyer lemon trees (selected as a particularly resilient citrus breed) and sample fruit harvested from the “portable orchard” during Frieze London. On the booth’s walls hang four framed Survival Piece environmental installation proposals by the Harrisons made between 1970-74, including the original drawings and exhibition rights for the iconic Survival Piece V: Portable Orchard.
Following their sojourn at Frieze London, the meyer lemon trees will be replanted at the orchard in Hampshire from which they came.
Survival Piece V Part II: Lemon Orchard Fragment was awarded the Frieze London Focus Stand Prize 2017 by a jury comprised of Richard Parry (Director, Glasgow International), Christopher Lew (Curator, The Whitney Museum) and Hanne Mugaas (Director Kunsthalle Stavanger).
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Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (The Harrisons) have been the subject of over 100 solo exhibitions, and have been included in over 250 group exhibitions, during their five decades of producing Ecological Art. They have exhibited work at the 1976 and 1980 Venice Biennales; documenta 8 (1987); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Tate, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Cooper Hewitt Museum, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; PS1, NY; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MA; Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, CA; Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany; and Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany. Works by the Harrisons are included in many major permanent collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. The Harrisons are both Professors Emeriti at University of California, Santa Cruz, and University of California, San Diego.
The Harrisons live and work in Santa Cruz, California.
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