Conversation 4: Jillian McDonald & Mark Lee Morris

Curator, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: Main Gallery + Grove St. June - August 2007

Conversations is in an ongoing series of two-person exhibitions that explore the relationship between an artist from the Bay Area and an artist from another point on the globe. The intent of this series is two-fold: on an intimate level it allows for a closer look at the production of two individual artists, while it also informs an expansive perspective of how artists from our region relate to an international contemporary art dialogue.

Jillian McDonald is a Canadian performance and media artist now living in New York City. Her Main Gallery exhibition, Me and Billy Bob, is an expansive video, photography and installation  project in which she inserts herself into film footage and masquerades as the object of actor Billy Bob Thornton's affection.

Mark Lee Morris is a San Francisco-based performance and media artist who tackles identity and the psychology of self-reflection in his practice. For Hamartia, located at the Gallery’s Grove St. Window Installation Site, passersby watch Morris film a weekly YouTube telenovella. Morris plays all of the characters, and the installation shifts scenes to accommodate the flow of the story. Episodes are viewable online and on a TV in the window.