Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson: No Diving!
June 12, 2016 – July 24, 2016

No Diving! is a site-specific installation by Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson that will function as an exhibition and event space from June 12th to July 24th. The installation generates the social environment of a swimming pool or conversation pit, embellished with plush decoration and furniture comforts, while permitting itself to be filled by a rotation of different activities.

On Wednesday evenings, Friday evenings, and Sunday afternoons, artists will arrive at the space to host video and listening sessions, installations, participatory artworks, conversations, and parties. The luscious environment and social function of No Diving! eagerly invites viewers to relax, socialize, and observe, while at the same time posing questions of social control and the tacit agreements that define a communal space.

The imperative of the show’s title — No Diving! — implies a set of rules that restricts and makes social activity possible, whether in a public pool or a polite argument. The result will be an ever-changing, two-month long soirée that tries out the complex system of exchange between artists, organizers, and the viewing public.

Weekly Events Wednesday & Friday Evenings, Sunday Afternoons

Opening Reception: Sunday, July 12 // 4-7 PM
Colleen Plumb: Wednesday, June 15 // 8 PM
Meg Duguid: Friday, June 17 // 8 PM
Lindsey Dorr-Niro: Sunday, June 19 // 4 PM
Savannah Reich: Wednesday, June 22 // 8 PM
Carrie Drapac, Lindsay Hopkins, and Lara Oppenheimer: Friday, June 24 // 8 PM
Hideous Beast: Sunday, June 26 // 4 PM
Richard Medina: Wednesday, June 29 // 8 PM
Ruby Thorkelson: Wednesday, July 6 // 8 PM
Melissa Oresky and Zak Boerger: Friday, July 8 // 8 PM
Adam Farcus: Sunday, July 10 // 4 PM
Cole Lu: Wednesday, July 13 // 8 PM
Kathleen Scott: Friday, July 15 // 8 PM
Esau McGhee: Sunday, July 17 // 4 PM
Sage Dawson: Wednesday, July 20 // 8 PM
Sage Dawson and Erin Hayden: Friday, July 22 // 8 PM
Mike Rea: Sunday, July 24 // 4 PM

Lacher & Robinson Collaborative Bio

Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson are curatorial, administrative, and studio collaborators. They founded and now Co-Direct DEMO Project, and also work together as a two-person team that steers the University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery. They are bonded by compulsion, neurosis, and loquation, along with deeply-rooted common interests in contemporary art. They launched a collaborative studio practice in 2014 that remains formative, susceptible to impulse, and attempts to reconcile idiosyncratic (and often conflicting) notions of untethered fantasy as it becomes tempered by pragmatism.

Allison Lacher Bio

Allison Lacher is a visual artist and organizer. She has exhibited extensively at venues that include Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, UT; PDX Contemporary Art, OR; CUAC Contemporary, UT; Southeastern Louisiana University Center for Contemporary Art, LA; Future Tenant at Carnegie Mellon University, PA; and Grounds for Sculpture, NJ. Artist residencies include Spiro Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Prairie Center of the Arts, University of Nevada Reno, and with Signal Fire in a week-long residency stationed in the Pajarita Wilderness on US/Mexico borderlands.

Allison Co-Directs DEMO Project, an alternative contemporary art gallery, and serves as the Visual Arts Gallery Manager at the University of Illinois Springfield. She has previously worked for the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, and has been a grant panelist for the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Her work has been featured on Arts Across Illinois, a program produced by WTTW Chicago PBS, Temporary Art Review, and From Here to There published by Princeton Architectural Press. She is a previous recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award.

Jeff Robinson Bio

Jeff Robinson was born, raised, and currently resides in central Illinois. He received his MFA degree from Illinois State University in 2011. Robinson has exhibited locally, regionally, and nationally at venues in Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York. His work has been published in New American Paintings and Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual. In 2014, he received an Individual Artist Support Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. In addition to his studio practice, Robinson teaches full-time as Instructor of Art at the University of Illinois Springfield in Springfield, IL, where he teaches courses in Painting and Drawing, and serves as Director for the University’s Visual Arts Gallery. Robinson is co-founder of DEMO Project, an alternative gallery space that emphasizes current trends in contemporary art.

For further info: romansusan.org/no-diving or contact gallery@romansusan.org

Image courtesy of Allison Lacher and Jeff Robinson

Official Website

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Tags: Adam Farcus, Allison Lacher, Bad At Sports Top V List, Carrie Drapac, Chicago, Cole Lu, Colleen Plumb, Erin Hayden, Esau McGhee, Hideous Beast, Jeff Robinson, Kathleen Scott, Lara Oppenheimer, Lindsey Dorr-Niro, Lindsey Hopkins, Meg Duguid, Melissa Oresky, Michael Rea, Richard Medina, Rogers Park, Roman Susan, Ruby Thorkleson, Sage Dawson, savannah reich, Zak Boerger