Ellen Lesperance: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper
November 7–December 21, 2019

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper, Ellen Lesperance’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, which will include new paintings on paper, as well as a knit sculpture.

Focused primarily on researching modes of Creative Direct Action deployed by female activists, Lesperance explores the languages of women’s work, public space and advocacy through the lens of important, yet lesser known histories. For over ten years, Lesperance has been involved in archiving ephemera from the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (Berkshire, England; 1981–1999), one of the longest running examples of feminist protest; its rich archive of images has long influenced her. In gridded paintings inspired by images sourced from her archive, Lesperance recreates the pattern, color, and gauge of hand-knit sweaters worn by women who lived at the camp.

For the exhibition, the artist has created a suite of paintings based on a singular image from this archive–a camper wearing a sweater which features the iconography of a newspaper with headlines, graphic images and columns of dense text. The newspaper as a popular format for the dissemination of news and ideas embodies the dominant political and social order–reporting on war and conflict, power and the marketplace. In the photo from Lesperance's archive, the activist seems to have subversively appropriated this format, knitting “STOP” and “SPECIAL” headlines into her homemade, unique garment. Siting the news on an individual body returns the abstracted events to the personal or individual and with this group of paintings, Lesperance inserts her own voice and imagination, as well as text and symbols related to the 1980s International Peace Camps, to create the news and agenda that she wants to see: STOP HATE, STOP WAR, STOP NUKES, STOP MEN, STOP LIES.

In opposition to a mainstream narrative, the works, thus, join an underground, counter-culture history of publishing that seeks to redress, complicate and expose how and what is news. These paintings echo a structure born from Greenham Common's Cold War-era activism, but, in the multiplicity of the artist's translations, they embody a model for contemporary civic participation as they code and disseminate information that reflects current political thinking.

Ellen Lesperance lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Currently, the artist's work is featured in Dress Codes with Diane Simpson at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, and in 2020, will be the focus of a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her work has been exhibited widely including at the New Museum and the Drawing Center, both New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Tate, St. Ives, UK; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Portland Art Museum and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, both Portland, OR; and the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford, PA. Her work is represented in the following public collections: the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY; the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Frye Art Museum, both Seattle, WA; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; the Museum Fine Arts Houston, Texas; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; and the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA. The artist has received grants and awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Art Matters, Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation and Headlands Center for the Arts’ Chiaro Award.

installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper


installation view: Flowers Wrapped in Newspaper

Ellen Lesperance
Stop War 1st Priority, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
29 1/2h x 29 1/2w in
74.93h x 74.93w cm
ELes 122

Ellen Lesperance
Stop Men Energie Times Spectacular, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
29 1/2h x 29 1/2w in
74.93h x 74.93w cm
ELes 132

Ellen Lesperance
Stop Nukes Special, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
29 1/2h x 29 1/2w in
74.93h x 74.93w cm
ELes 133

Ellen Lesperance
Stop Hate, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
29 1/2h x 29 1/2w in
74.93h x 74.93w cm
ELes 134

Ellen Lesperance
Bla, Bla, Bla. Stop Lies!, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
29 1/2h x 29 1/2w in
74.93h x 74.93w cm
ELes 143

Ellen Lesperance
Q of Hearts, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
44h x 29 1/2w in
111.76h x 74.93w cm
ELes 144

Ellen Lesperance
Wake the Dead, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper; wool
42 x 29 1/2 inches; knit component variable
ELes 145

Ellen Lesperance
Wake the Dead, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper; wool
42 x 29 1/2 inches; knit component variable
ELes 145