Robin Hill: Organizing Principles

April 6-10, 2021
Shelter in Place Gallery
Boston, MA

Giving artists an opportunity to make "large scale" work from their shelter in place locations.

1in = 1ft

Run by Eben Haines and Delaney Dameron, Shelter In Place Gallery is a 1:12 scale exhibition space, started amidst the nation wide lockdowns and mandatory quarantines due to the COVID19 pandemic. Our main goal is to show artists' work during a period when galleries and museums are closed, studios are often hard to access, and both monetary and social resources for artists are slim. The gallery began as a rainy day project, to serve as a background for maquettes of larger works Eben had neither the space nor budget to produce.

When the pandemic hit, and stay at home orders went into place, it became clear that many artists might not be able to make or show work for some time. The miniature scale of the gallery works to counteract this in a multitude of ways, most notably the fact that being small means that artists don't necessarily need access to their studios to create work, and can do so from home. Even without studios, artists are able to make much more ambitious work than they could ever afford to at full scale, let alone have shown in a commercial gallery in Boston. Hopefully we allow people to make the work they've always wanted to make. 

We know how important art is to building our impression of the world around us. Right now, when the world is seemingly falling apart, we look to those who are able to distill their own experience into something visible. Art not only allows us to take in multiple perspectives far outside of our own, but also reminds us that the anger, the fear, the joy and suffering and triumph that we cycle through each day is not ours alone to bear and witness. We look to art to educate, to let information filter in through a familiar channel, and we are increasingly reliant on alternative spaces to show us work that speaks truth to power, that reflect society outside of the increasingly beige art market.

We make no claim of having met this demand, but it is our aim to elevate the voices in our community that speak to our shared issues through art, especially when brick and mortar spaces are unable to.

Since its inception, the mission of the gallery has grown as the art world continues to change drastically. We hope to continue to run a platform that makes both showing work and viewing work more accessible for all.

- Eben Haines

MFA Boston
Hyperallergic
Boston Art Review
Boston Globe

Organizing Principles is the first iteration of an unfolding career overview exhibition consisting of eight works produced over four decades. 

Acting as an artist, visualizer, facilitator, gleaner, agitator, conduit, re-arranger, host, fermenter, forager, optimist, collaborator, educator, seed-bag-carrier, and transmitter, I focus on the intersection between drawing, photography, and sculpture. My work is a mediation on time and place and embraces a collaborative sensibility where objects and materials, rejected by others, serve as starting points for acts of transformation and reclamation. The underlying conceptual thread that moves throughout my work is my interest in collection, extraction, and re-presentation and in transforming seemingly inconsequential matter into meaningful statements about matter itself.  I strive to give shape to nuance and to relocate familiar things in an unfamiliar order.

- Robin Hill exhibition statement