Ann Agee

Ann Agee challenges our definition of craft through elevating utilitarian objects to the level of artwork–in taking a frame, vase, or plate, for example, and turning it into a ceramic sculpture. Drawing on manifestations of home, Agee creates objects and installations that explore notions of interior life, material culture, feminism, and personal history. Interested in investigating the limitations of appropriation, mimicry, and manufacturing, Agee employs familiar motifs–from household objects to modernist architecture–that she at once subverts, infusing them with her own personal and familial narratives.

Many of Agee’s works are stamped with Agee Manufacturing Co., a signature of sorts, exemplifying Agee’s desires to replicate, copy and mimic pre-existing forms. The stamp creates a mirage that the work is a multiple and not unique when in fact, replicated or not, all of Agee’s works are unique. This play between art, material and function, is a constant point of exploration for Agee, and much of her work playfully tows the line between object and artwork, form and function, handmade and readymade.

Agee has created major installations at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her work has been seen in group exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and Katonah Art Museum, among other institutions. In addition to her Guggenheim Fellowship, Agee has received support from the NEA and grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.

Courtesy of P.P.O.W.