"That, in a nutshell, is the message of "Mammoth," an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that is anything but tidy and whose centerpiece, true to the show's title, is a 700-square-foot light table covered in a couple of junk shop's worth of knickknacks and gewgaws. Taken as a whole, this show - which also features sculpture, video, photography and installation and a wearable woolly mammoth - is a kind of self-portrait."
"The Chicago-based Cave, 67, is best known for his series of "Soundsuits," elaborate wearable sculptures encrusted with buttons, twigs, toys, beads, feathers, sequins, bottle caps or other everyday objects gathered from thrift stores, flea markets, antique shops and the internet, and activated by the artist - who is also a dancer and fashion designer - through performative movement that makes them clatter, rattle and rustle."
Nick Cave's Mammoth at the Smithsonian American Art Museum centers on a 700-square-foot light table strewn with knickknacks and gewgaws alongside sculpture, video, photography, installation and a wearable woolly mammoth. Cave is best known for Soundsuits, wearable sculptures encrusted with found everyday objects and activated through performative movement that produces sound. The collecting impulse appears focused on art-making rather than domestic hoarding. The shrine-like A Lit History light table renders memories in material form and evokes family, childhood, body, likeness, politics and career. The show opens with Roam, a woolly mammoth costume shown in video on the Lake Michigan shoreline, accompanied by other costumed performers.
Read at The Washington Post
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