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Grubstake

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Press release

Grubstake, by Natures Radio
May 15 - June 12, 2004

Opening Reception:
May 15, 6-10pm
BASEKAMP, Philadelphia

The Grubstake exhibition is about homesteading and staking a claim. The Natures Radio group is creating artwork, but through collaboration they are also creating a social arrangement. This idea of the prospectors’ grubstake is being used to frame the social structure they are constructing in the gallery.

Grubstake exhibition borrows it’s title from a term originally used to describe resources and land given to gold prospectors, in hopes of gaining big returns. A grubstake was an investment through money or property used to produce more wealth. As part of their exhibition, the BASEKAMP site is offered as a foundation for building a collaborative homestead, and the Natures Radio group is producing their own currency to be used as a resource.

In this exhibition, physical limits of the BASEKAMP space give way to alternate dimensions brought about thro through the group’s combined vision and shared values. The artists are not literally breaking ground, but breaking through spatial and social barriers - expanding a given area to become an endless space, through illusion and richness of imagination.

Natures Radio decided on their name during a camping trip last fall, while staying at a campground administered by a very strict, environmentally rigorous policy. In particular, excessive noise was frowned upon - no radios allowed. An article was posted outside the bathrooms outlining the harsh rule system. It was called "Given a Chance, Sometimes Nature's Radio Makes the Most Amazing Sounds," inviting the artists to open their ears to the world around them.

The Grubstake exhibition is about land use, building relationships, misusing space, creating community, and expanding dimensions. The exhibition space is inherently social in its division and dispersal as the BASEKAMP site itself is offered as a ‘grubstake’ for the group. In this exhibition, the space essentially begins as a vacant lot, containing an abandoned structure left standing from the previous exhibition. This open space becomes common ground to this large group of artists, who are staking a claim with a joint interest in its return.