If You Happen To Be On Long Island (NY, USA)

Photo © Jacques-Jean Tiziou / http://www.jjtiziou.net

About WetLand

WetLand is a modified houseboat made by the ecological artist Mary Mattingly to demonstrate easy-to-do sustainability projects (solar power, rain water collection and purification, vegetable gardening, upcycling, etc.). WetLand describes the impact each individual can have on the environment. The vessel is being brought to the East End in conjunction with the exhibition, Radical Seafaring, and will be located on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.

About Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly creates sculptural environments in urban spaces. She recently completed an installation for the Havana Biennial with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and is currently engaged in a floating food forest for New York City calledSwale. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York; the Seoul Art Center; the Brooklyn Museum; the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln Massachusetts; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. With the U.S. Department of State and the Bronx Museum of the Arts she participated in the smARTpower Program, traveling to Manila.

Visiting Hours

WetLand will be open to the public Friday through Monday, June 10 to the 23 from 12pm to 5pm. Visitors can also board the vessel for a tour by appointment; for more information contact Century Arts Foundation Curator of Special Projects, Andrea Grover: 631-283-2118 x140; grovera@parrishart.org.

From the New York Times, a profile of the artist:

In the first few days after “WetLand” arrived in Sag Harbor, a duck laid eggs on the boat. Lori Hawkins/courtesy of Parrish Art Museum

Inside a Floating, Eco-Conscious Art Project

By WENDY VOGEL

This summer on Long Island’s East End, one exhibition features artwork that’s a far cry from the stereotypical blue-chip Hamptons summer style, with utopian aspirations and often provisional aesthetics. “Radical Seafaring,” organized by the Parrish Art Museum curator Andrea Grover, brings together 25 artists and collectives who create, as she writes, “land art, only afloat”: installations and performances designed to be experienced off dry land. The show traces the history of the genre, from midcentury Conceptualists such as Bas Jan Ader (who was tragically lost at sea during a 1975 sailing performance), Chris Burden and the obscure Japanese collective The Play to contemporary makers like Mark Dion, Duke Riley and Swoon. And for two weeks this summer, the New York-based artist Mary Mattingly brings the exhibition truly offshore with “WetLand,” a houseboat sculpture docked beside yachts at the Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.

Mattingly, 37, follows the tradition of environmental artists who devise alternative ways of living in the face of impending ecological disaster: she seeks to explore “what you can do on the water that you can’t do on land,” she says, and considers the sea an extension of the commons. In a 2009 work, the “Waterpod” project, Mattingly and four others lived on a self-sustaining barge that navigated New York’s waterways, kitted out with solar energy, edible plants, a water filtration system and chicken coop. Mattingly initially conceived “WetLand” — a repurposed 1971 Rockwell Whitcraft houseboat — for the Philadelphia nonprofit FringeArts in 2014. Collaborating with over 30 organizations, Mattingly gutted the 45-by-12-foot vessel, outfitting it with solar panels and varied species of wood stripped from a gym floor in Iowa. She describes the dramatically sloping boat as “something between sinking and rising, a shack and a palace.” It symbolically evokes the housing market crash, and is literally reminiscent of collapsing homes…

Read the whole article here.