Art in Public: Gimore’s Girls
By
May 12, 2010
Kate Gilmore appeared in this year’s Whitney Biennial with the installation Standing Here, for which the artist videotaped from above her attempts, and ultimate success, breaking out of a drywall monolith. The video was paired with a sculptural prop, the broken wall. In Walk the Walk architecture returns, resilient and cumbersome as ever.
Walk the Walk takes place in Bryant Park as part of the Public Art Fund’s “In the Public Realm” program. It’s Gilmore’s first public performance, and the first in which she herself does not appear. Atop a ten-by-ten-foot yellow platform elevated eight feet from the ground, seven women pace the perimeter of the structure. The structure is populated from 8:30 until 5:30, the workday, during the show’s week-long run. The women wear yellow dresses, with beige “career woman” pumps that gently pummel the cube’s top. At 1:30 each day (lunch time, of course), the women switch shifts. One group descends by ladder; momentarily, the second group takes its place atop the block.
