EXHIBIT: "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" - A sense of direction in the middle of Nowhere

Jeremy Drummond's "Culture/Whitewash (Spring Melt)"
From "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" Exhibit
McLean Project For The Arts And Ada Gallery, Virginia

Does anybody really know this is nowhere?

Or where somewhere is?

From The Washington Post: A sense of direction in the middle of 'Nowhere' by Jessica Dawson:

How perfect: a show about the suburbs, in the suburbs.

McLean Project for the Arts hosts Canadian-born, Richmond-based artist Jeremy Drummond's wry chronicles of cul-de-sacs and prefab homes. Drummond skips the easy anti-suburb critique in favor of more piquant offerings in a show called "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." Included in the exhibition is a photo essay of foreclosed homes in Delaware, which he gives the Bernd and Hilla Becher treatment (Drummond documents, he doesn't judge). Still, this subject matter has been tilled before.

What lodged in my brain was Drummond's "Street Signs" series. These four-foot-across aluminum panels boast close-up photographs (printed onto die-cut decals) of suburban street signs that Drummond spotted during long drives. Some of the he-swears-he-didn't-make-them-up intersections: the corner of Culture Crescent and Whitewash Way, the intersection of Fidelity Avenue and Honeymoon Drive.

"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" finds Drummond striving to subvert the suburbs' Stepford Wives reputation. But the artist's point might be stronger if he included portraits of the area's inhabitants or clues to the complexities of its population. As it stands, Drummond's open-endedness still allows us our prejudices.

More on why Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Neil Young's Albums in Order.

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