Lorna Mills
FUTURE FAIR
Opening May 1
through 4th, 2024
Canadian Artist Lorna Mills returns to New York City with one of her signature Animated GIF installations Yellowwhirlaway (2017) This 4-channel powerhouse animated GIF installation from Lorna Mills was commissioned by the Museum of the Moving Image in 2017, entering the permanent collection. The work resonates today more than ever – a frenetic looping journey into a disembodied whirlwind of climate instability and the pileup of contemporary culture. Mills’ work often pulls pop culture and erotica into frenetic GIFs presented online, but also includes physical installation at large scale.
“I always consider myself working when I’m online,” Mills says. For her, there’s no distinction between mindless browsing and intent searches for specific material—you never know what you might find. She sources images from Reddit, Google+, Porn Fail, and the deep web, and takes clear delight in “internet filth” but also gives careful attention to mundane imagery we might not normally think twice about.
Yellowhirlaway is characteristic of Mills’ larger than life GIF-based installation work. It layers looping animations of found imagery like muscle cars, cyclones, and dismembered bodies until the collective effect turns intangible, anxious, and outrageous.
In addition to this installation, a catalog of select works available from the artist’s historic inventory will be featured in TRANSFER’s booth. Lorna Mills is a founding member of the TRANSFER Data Trust, a decentralized artist-owned archive and cooperative value exchange network. Artworks acquired from the Data Trust are backed with a perpetual care plan and network of specialists. Visit the TRANSFER Data Trust and select ‘START TRUSTING’ to authenticate and view the works available.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Canadian artist, Lorna Mills has actively exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions since the early 1990’s. Her practice has included obsessive Ilfochrome printing, obsessive painting, obsessive super 8 film & video, and obsessive on-line animated GIFs incorporated into restrained off-line installation work.
Past exhibitions include “Dreamlands” at the Whitney Museum, NY, “Yellowwhirlaway” at the Museum of the Moving Image, NY and “The Great Code” at TRANSFER, NY. For the month of March, 2016, her work “Mountain Light/Time” was displayed in Times Square, NYC, every night as part of the Midnight Moment program. Her work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition TRANSFER Download: Sea Change at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from February – August 2024.
She curated “Ways of Something”, a remake of the 1972 John Berger documentary “Ways of Seeing” episodes one through four, featuring over 115 networked artists and recently “WellNow.wtf”, a sprawling netart project co-curated with Faith Holland and Wade Wallerstien.
Lorna Mills is represented by TRANSFER in New York & Miami and DAM Gallery in Berlin.