Hunting and gathering in Staten Island

Former Light Work Artist-in-Residence Christine Osinski recently opened a solo exhibition called Staten Island Shoppers at Blue Sky in Portland. Like her series Drawn to Water (click here to see examples of this series in the Light Work Collection), the images in Staten Island Shoppers focus on people inhabiting a world apart. In the case of the shoppers, Osinski depicts a world apart that, despite its material opulence, feels more like a deserted island than a bountiful oasis.

Writing about the series, Osinski explains, “From 1993 through 1995 [when the artist was living in Staten Island] I roamed through an overwhelming landscape of excess, often under brutal lighting, to collect images that would match my experience of shopping—peering at the harsh faces of hunters and gatherers—adults and children alike.  As I did this work, the promise of capitalism, gratification through shopping, clearly became an activity of diminishing returns as I too became a hunter-gatherer, but of images.”

Christine Osinski’s exhibition Staten Island Shoppers will be showing at Blue Sky until June 27. Images from her series Drawn to Water are featured in the 2009 Light Work Annual.