Ulterior Gallery presented works by Irish interdisciplinary artist George Bolster for the physical and digital versions of NADA Miami 2020 Art Fair. The in-person exhibition will took place at Ulterior Gallery’s former space 172 Attorney St., New York, NY 10002 from December 1 through 5, 2020.

The main piece in the physical presentation at the gallery was a large-scale jacquard tapestry of Grand Stairs Escalante in Utah—an at-risk National Monument under Trump—measuring 10 by 27 feet and fitted floor-to-ceiling to the gallery’s north and northeast walls. Affixed to this panoramic work are smaller tapestries that capture the landscape of Allan Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California, the first radio telescope array designed specifically for the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. In Bolster’s conception, the two distinct views signal “here” and “elsewhere,” and the installation evokes the idea of the Sublime landscape, formerly that of many indigenous nations, now under threat from legislation passed by the current administration. By rendering the negative image of this landscape the face of the work, Bolster challenges viewers to perceive what is hidden or invisible in contemporary society and culture. Also evoked are the extinction events humans are causing and the current, pandemic-related “Anthro-pause” and its positive effects on the environment. Juxtaposed onto this reality “here,” the telescope landscape redirects or elevates our attention to the surreal reality “elsewhere.” As the conservation of our land continues to be compromised, Bolster’s vision evokes the exploration of the skies, where a more evolved version of our society might venture in order to conserve humanity itself.

The images on Bolster’s jacquard tapestries were shot with a high-resolution digital camera. The invention of the jacquard technique in the early nineteenth century involved the creation of the first digital images, made through binary code, and the cycle of reinterpreting the image from the digital signal into the object is a repeated process of evolution. Bolster hand-embroiders texts or images onto the tapestry surface, or manipulates the weave by removing specific colors in the tapestry, and uses this excised material to embroider planets and celestial bodies back into the image, revealing the universe that is ordinarily invisible to us. This restructuring and interference with the image shifts the history and future of the subject into a new reality.

Closely related to the Grand Stairs Escalante Park tapestry, photographic works on the south wall of the gallery—composed of three panels that depict vandalized prickly pear cacti from a national park in Arizona, a bird facing imminent extinction, and streaks of the rainbow spectrum—represent the harsh contemporary reality for nature conservation. In the text works he sometimes makes, Bolster uses the word “We” to denote humans collectively, recognizing the global effort that will be required if we are continue to live with(in) nature. As the artist writes: “Collectively we need to move beyond the divides of religion, race, tradition, and class and somehow learn to act collaboratively as humans.” The third panel, with its rainbow prism, represents the section of the electromagnetic spectrum of light that humans have evolved to see, as well as the hope of a restoration and renewal of devastated nature, and the electromagnetic spectrum of light that humans have evolved to see.