PRESS RELEASE
Stockpile: New Photographs by Dornith Doherty
Nov 19 – Dec 23, 2011
Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, Texas is pleased to announce the opening of Stockpile, an exhibition of new photographs by Dornith Doherty. An opening reception for the artist will be held Saturday, November 19, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The exhibit continues through Dec 23.
In this new body of work, Doherty explores the role of seed banks and their preservation efforts in the face of climate change, the extinction of natural species and decreased agricultural diversity. Traveling from the Arctic tundra of the Svalbard Archipelago to the Sonoran desert in Arizona since 2010, this new exhibition includes archival pigment prints and digital chromogenic lenticular prints of x-ray collages of seeds and plants.
Doherty used on-site x-ray equipment at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wakehurst Place in Sussex, England and at Carestream Molecular Imaging in New Haven Connecticut to photograph seeds and cloned plants from the facilities' extensive storage vaults. This work questions the complex philosophical, anthropological, and ecological issues surrounding the role of science, technology, and human agency in the context of seed banks.
Dornith Doherty was born in Houston, Texas and received a B.A. from Rice University in Houston and a MFA in Photography from Yale University. She is a Professor of Photography at the University of North Texas. She is a recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the United States Department of the Interior, the Indiana Arts Commission and the Society for Contemporary Photography.
Since her last exhibition at the gallery in 2009, Doherty’s work has been featured in exhibitions in the New Mexico Museum of Art, (2011), the Bluecoat, Liverpool, England (2011), Atlánticas Colectivas, Tenerife, Spain (2011), the Encuentros Abiertos Photography Biennial in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2010), Galveston Arts Center (2010), among others.
Her work is in many permanent collections, including the Martin Museum of Art at Baylor University, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts in Milwaukee, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Yale University Library, the Museet Fotokunst in Odense, Denmark, Goldman-Sachs in New York City, Harrah's Casino in New Orleans, Sprint Corporation in Kansas City, the City of Denton, Texas, W Hotel and Residences in Dallas, Federal Reserve Bank in Houston, and the Centro de Fotografía Isla de Tenerife in Spain.
Doherty's work has also been written about extensively and has appeared in articles in publications such as the Dallas Observer, Modern Luxury Dallas, Art Lies Magazine, Austin American Statesman, Austin Chronicle, Denton Record Chronicle, Elizabeth Avedon blogspot, FiniteFoto Magazine, Fort Worth Weekly, Fraction Magazine, Houston Press, Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.