Artist Statement:
I explore what's avoided, invisible, or habitually overlooked, but widespread — like suicidal depression, the proximity of incarceration, the involuntary sounds people make when they struggle to talk, and the way butt cheeks feel after sitting on the toilet. I focus on these and other shared realities in order to validate experiences that dominant culture avoids, and to celebrate the strange freshness that results from focusing on what is neglected.
I approach each project as an animation. Animation embodies the massive, collective, yet easily-missed flow that everything is constantly going through: vibrating atoms that compose matter, our gradual morph of growth and wrinkles, even narratives of identity and violent ideologies. Like how animation tricks the brain into perceiving a single image that moves, our rate and scale of perception day-to-day creates an illusion of isolation. I'm concerned with the consequences of that trick: suffering from feeling stuck, and the social and ecological damage caused by denying our shared, blurred edges.
Each project is a spell to transform violent cycles, and cultivate pleasure in experiencing each other as interconnected, weird phenomena.
Bio:Gwyneth is a depressive animist based in Chicago. She primarily works with the handmade animation process, giving form to common sensations and phenomena that are invisible or often avoided. She's presented work in galleries, festivals, forests, and empty lots around the northern hemisphere, including with Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Roots & Culture, Roman Susan, Woman Made Gallery, the Experimental Sound Studio, Constellation, Hyde Park Art Center, and 6018 NORTH in Chicago; St. Charles Projects in Baltimore; MoMA PS1 in New York; the Freies Museum in Berlin; and @ptt in Geneva. She's been an artist in residence at the Experimental Sound Studio, FRISE (Germany), Harold Arts (Ohio), Arteles Creative Center (Finland), Mall of Found (New York), Lacawac Sanctuary and Field Station (Pennsylvania), and Utopiana (Switzerland), and her work is included in collections at FRISE and the Institute of Contemporary Art Library in Baltimore. Gwyneth's work has been written about in Newcity Chicago, Chicago Artist Writers, the Chicago Reader, and Chicago Magazine. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a member of the Make Yourself Useful anti-racism collective. She thinks all artist bios and CVs are deceptive.
(Photo by Meredith Zielke)
Various kinds of press and online presence:
Return to the Everywhere at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago Artist Writers, March 2020
Return to the Everywhere booklet, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, April 2020
Survey for White Artists, Monday Journal, April 2020
Concert preview, Chicago Reader, February 2019
Bill Meyer reviews Chyme, Dusted Magazine, March 2019
OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Gwyneth Anderson, OtherPeoplesPixels Blog, December 2014
Laughing Video recommendation, Chicago Magazine, November 2011
