Penelope Umbrico

Penelope Umbrico (January 31, 1957) is an artist / photographer best known for appropriating images found using search engines and picture sharing websites. Her work has been published in books, exhibited and she has received awards.

Education and career

Umbrico received her O.A.C.A. at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada in 1980. She obtained her M.F.A. in 1989 at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

In 2010 her exhibition, As Is, at LMAK Projects featured a series of work called Broken Sets (EBay) (2009–2010), which consisted of images of broken LCD television screens that were acquired from pictures posted by eBay sellers trying to sell damaged television sets for parts.^[1]

Her project Suns from Flickr started in 2006 when she found 541,795 pictures of sunsets searching the word “sunset” on the photo-sharing web site Flickr while looking for the most photographed subject (which the sunset turned out to be). She took just the suns from these pictures and made Kodak snapshot prints of them.

For each installation, the title reflects the number of hits she gets searching "sunset" on Flickr at the time – for example, the first installation was “541,795 Suns From Flickr” in 2006; subsequent installations were: “2303057 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 9/25/07” (2007); “3,221,717 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 3/31/08” (2008); “5,911,253 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 8/03/09” (2009) - the title itself becoming a comment on the ever increasing use of web-based photo communities and a reflection of the collective content there.

Her work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts In the Machine".^[2] In March 2012, Art in America featured Umbrico's work on the cover^[3] and inside along with a short essay by the artist.

She has served as a member of faculty at Bard College's Summer MFA (Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts) (Chair of MFA Photography from 2004–2010), and she is a core faculty member at the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography Video and Related Media in NYC.

Publications

Variants, 1991
From Catalogs, 1998
Out of Place, 2002
Honeymoon Suites, 2002
Many Leonards Not Natman, 2010
Desk Trajectories (As Is), 2010
Signals Still / Ink (Book) / Out of Order, from the series Signal to Ink, 2011

Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship^{[citation needed]}
New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship^{[citation needed]}
Anonymous Was A Woman Award^{[citation needed]}
Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant^{[citation needed]}
New York Foundation for the Arts Catalogue Project Grant^{[citation needed]}
Harvestworks Scholar Fellowship^{[citation needed]}

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

International Center of Photography, New York^{[citation needed]}
2010: As Is, LMAK Projects, NY^[1]
Julie Saul Gallery, NY^{[citation needed]}
Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston^{[citation needed]}
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL^{[citation needed]}
P/M Gallery, Toronto^{[citation needed]}
Bruce Silverstein Gallery, NY^[4]

Exhibitions with others

MoMA PS1, NY^{[citation needed]}
MassMoCA, MA^{[citation needed]}
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA^{[citation needed]}
The Pingyao International Photography Festival, China^{[citation needed]}
The Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany^{[citation needed]}
Museum of Modern Art, NY^{[citation needed]}
Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia^{[citation needed]}
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge^{[citation needed]}
Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, NY^{[citation needed]}
International Center of Photography, NY^{[citation needed]}

Unclassified exhibitions

2009: For A Brief Time Only At a Location Near You^[5]
2011: Exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles festival, Arles, France.
2011: Laureate from Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award.

Collections

Umbrico's work is held in the following collections:

References

^ ^a ^b Milder, Patricia. "Penelope Umbrico: As Is". The Brooklyn Rail (June 2010).
^ Walker, Rob (January 5, 2011). "Cyberspace When You're Dead". New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
^ Art in America, Archives March 2012
^ Bruce Silverstein Gallery. "Penelope Umbrico: Silvery Lights." Press release, accessed February 1, 2016. http://www.brucesilverstein.com/exhibitions/penelope-umbrico-silvery-light.
^ For a Brief Time Only at a Location Near You, exhibition notes

[Milder-1] Milder, Patricia. "Penelope Umbrico: As Is". The Brooklyn Rail (June 2010).

[2] Walker, Rob (January 5, 2011). "Cyberspace When You're Dead". New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2014.

[3] Art in America, Archives March 2012

[4] Bruce Silverstein Gallery. "Penelope Umbrico: Silvery Lights." Press release, accessed February 1, 2016. http://www.brucesilverstein.com/exhibitions/penelope-umbrico-silvery-light.

[5] For a Brief Time Only at a Location Near You, exhibition notes

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