INAUGURAL SUMMER RESIDENCY
2023
FRONT GALLERY & BACK GALLERY
MELANIE COOPER
WRACK LINE
Wrack lines extend haphazardly along global shorelines as broken lumps of sea debris tossed and tumbled out from unseen watery depths of the ocean. Tidal collisions with human refuse and foreign objects result in strange combinations of broken and unrelated bodies lumped together in random globs of various size and proportion. The abject and decomposing wrack bodies belies its anchoring support of ecological systems and the rich vitality of its mass as food and life source.
As the inaugural summer residency for FELTspace, Melanie Cooper’s exploration of The Wrack Line unfolds across an immersive month of process-driven work in the gallery space to present experimental textiles, drawing, and writing as an inquiry into fragment and remnant as metaphor, and the expansive potential of conventional techniques, materials, and shifting spatial relationships.
