Art world ‘Fish’ story
‘New reality’ gallery comes to Crosstown
The title of the gallery installation is simple: “Fish.”
Is it an acronym? Connoting a “Fancifully Immersive Submarine Habitat,” perhaps? Or a “Fantastical Ichthyological Sense of Humor”?
No, it’s just “Fish.” A word that is short and simple, yet loaded with enough associations — cultural, religious, environmental, even primal — to fill the Marianas Trench.
Even so, “The only agenda is fish — peace and fish,” said co-creator Laura Jean Hocking. “There’s really not any political agenda to it. It’s escapism, and we feel like right now people can re-
ally use some escapism.”
Conceived and created by Memphis artists and filmmakers Hocking, Sarah Fleming and Christopher Reyes, “Fish” uses paint, light, music and projected images, videos and animations to transform the oversize-shoebox dimensions of the Crosstown Arts gallery into what Reyes calls an “immersive” and “experimental” art space that suggests a whimsical fish tank.
“We want to take someone out of reality and put them in a new reality,” Reyes said.
“We love to host shows that are full-scale installation,” said Emily Harris Halpern, director of programming for Crosstown Arts, the nonprofit organization that operates several art and performances spaces in the Crosstown neighborhood. “They approached us, and we thought this was such a unique concept, we wanted to do whatever we could to make it work.”
Designed by Reyes and painted by all three artists, the gallery’s north wall has become a 46-by-12-foot mural that depicts fish, sea horses, an octopus, an old-school helmeted deep-sea diver and other aquatic figures, frolicking among such unusual “fish bowls” as a martini glass and a bubble gum machine. The effect is part Rube Goldberg (cited by Reyes as an influence), part Steve Zissou.
Hocking’s south wall, decorated with gauges and submarine-type instruments, showcases three porthole-shaped projected videos of swimming fish, plus the occasional weather pattern and cosmonaut. The east wall (near the entrance to the gallery) is a black curtain, while the west wall, designed by Fleming, will be covered with fish footage as if it were a giant screen saver.
The installation was very labor-intensive, requiring two weeks of planning and painting in the space.
The fish footage mostly was shot by Fleming and Hocking during visits to the aquarium at the Memphis Zoo, a place that Fleming has begun to frequent since the birth two years ago of Mati Lou Reyes, daughter of married couple Fleming and Reyes.