Pop-up Show
Photos from McKinney Falls State Park, Austin, TX - Aug 27-29
Pop-up Show is a mobile exhibition project featuring new works by artist Sara Vanderbeek installed within and surrounding the pop-up camper in which the artist and her family lived and traveled during 2020.
Sheltered during the pandemic, Vanderbeek drove thousands of miles with her partner and child and experienced an expansive but distant view of the country. The camper acted as a safety net, home, office, classroom, and studio for them as America slid into an increasingly polarized political landscape of protests, climate crises, and a historic racial justice movement.
“A brave and exuberant display of political opinion as well as personal thoughts and feelings. And it’s a celebration of domestic craft fueled with the need to create ”
Vanderbeek’s expressive figurative fabric paintings covers most of the camper’s interior surfaces and hang outside, blowing in the breeze like laundry on clotheslines. The painting’s bright colors reference nature but also signal alarm and dissent. Visceral depictions of family, domesticity, and travel are contrasted with portraits of depression, forests burning in California, and the endless media feed of tumultuous political news.
The Pop-up Show tour is an active and evolving exhibition project that will continue to pop-up in the woods, galleries, institutional grounds, and other locations connected to the continental interstate highway.
Vanderbeek will share Pop-up Show during an out-and-back journey from Austin, TX, to the Northeast with nine initial tour stops leading up to the Austin premiere August 26-29 in South Austin’s McKinney Falls State Park followed by the Museum of Human Achievement (MoHA) in Austin in November (date TBA).
The camper is open-air but masks are required while inside and we will be practicing social distancing so a limited number of people will be inside at once. The camper is not ADA accessible, however most works are visible and able to be experienced from the exterior.
Link to the full press package.
Pop up tour
July 18-21 St. Louis, MO
July 22 Paoli, IN
July 23-25 Washington, D.C.
July 26-Aug 1 New York, NY
Aug 2-4 Shenandoah State Park, VA
Aug 5-7 Cades Cove, TN
Aug 8-9 Bentonville Film Festival at 214 at CACHE Springdale, AR
Saturday, Aug 8 from 12:00pm-5:00pm
Sunday, Aug 9 from 4:00pm-6:00pm
Aug 27-29 McKinney Falls State Park, Austin, TX.
Opening reception Friday, Aug 27 from 6:00pm-10:00pm
Reservations required. For park day pass reservations click here.
Nov 20-21 Museum of Human Achievement (MoHA), Austin, TX
