Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching

About

Ways of Attaching is the first institutional survey exhibition of artist Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014). It spans three decades of Mayer’s prolific and varied practice, from fabric sculptures, artist’s books and ephemeral installations of the 1970s through to ink drawings and pastels from the 1980s and 90s.

ROSEMARY MAYER

Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014) was a prolific artist involved in the New York art scene from the late 1960s. Best known for her large-scale sculptures using fabric as the primary material, she also created works on paper, artist books and outdoor installation exploring themes of temporality, history and biography. She was additionally a writer, art critic and translator. Mayer was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the first cooperative gallery for women in the U.S. and had one of her earliest shows there. During the 1970s and 1980s, her work was also shown at many New York alternative art spaces, including The Clocktower, Sculpture Center and Franklin Furnace, and in university galleries throughout the country. In 1982, her translation of the diary of Mannerist artist Jacopo da Pontormo was published along with a catalogue of her work. Recent exhibitions of Mayer’s work have taken place at Gordon Robichaux, New York (2021); ChertLüdde, Berlin (2020); Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (2017); and Southfirst, Brooklyn (2016). Her work was also included in the exhibition Bizarre Silks, Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, etc., curated by Nick Mauss at Kunsthalle Basel (2020).