Mac McGill, on the third floor at ABC No Rio’s Ides of March. (Photos by C-M.)
As the character of Manhattan’s Lower East Side is wrung dry by gentrification (a fancy-pants hotel on Rivington anyone?), it is reassuring to know that a few neighborhood hold-outs are still alive and breathing in the city. ABC No Rio, the crumbling Rivington Street tenement and artist/punk music squat (taken over by a group of artists and activists in 1980) is still hosting poetry readings and art shows. It is also home to various activist organizations and events.
Last week, the group launched its biannual building-wide exhibition, Ides of March, featuring a variety of works in an equal number of media by artists from all over the city. The theme: collaboration. The collective also unveiled its design for a new building, designed by Paul Castrucci.
The show is up until April 4th, and will conclude with a benefit art auction to help fund construction. You can read about the group’s storied history in the Brooklyn Rail. (For all you high art types: there’s even a Joseph Beuys connection.)
Click on photos to make ‘em big. Money shots after the jump.
Mac McGill, who, by the way, is having a show at Umbrella Haus in NYC, at 21-23 Avenue C, on March 29th at 8pm.
Old stencil on the exterior of ABC No Rio.
Broad Thinking, in the first floor hallway.
Dianne Bowen, of Broad Thinking, on the first floor hallway.
Porter & Suma, third floor.
Collective Gesture, on the third floor.
A piece of ABC NO Rio history: Property of the People of the Lower East Side.
On the second floor.
Endless Love Crew on the exterior of ABC No Rio. See an evolution of this piece.
Posted by C-Monster.
cool photographs, great show, Lower Eastside flexed it’s artistic muscles within the history of it’s roots.
Artistic genius. You make me wish I had returned to New York just for the sake of being in the midst of all of the art.