MIAMI-DADE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM

The Reading Room

A Temporary Space for Artists’ Books, Publications and Multiples

Friday, October 8, Noon - 2 p.m.

Miami-Dade Public Library System, Main Library Children’s Room, 101 W. Flagler Street, Miami

[log in to unmask] / www.mdpls.org / 305-375-5048

 

With special guests:
Agustina Woodgate, artist, Growing Up, a performance and exhibition at Main Library
Anthony Spinello, founder and director of Spinello Gallery

On the second Friday of each month, a secret room in the Children’s Room at the Main Library becomes The Reading Room. Visitors can stop by any time between 12 and 2 p.m. to experience selections from the Library’s collection of artists’ books, publications and multiples.

The theme this month will be fairy tales. In her work, special guest Agustina Woodgate investigates the ways we compose rituals, traditions, and narratives through the materials and places around us. The improvisational performances in her Fairy Tale Series are structured like stories with conflicts and a beginning, middle and end. She constructs settings or stages from materials found at the exhibition site and invites musicians to play live during the performance. The artist’s close friends or family members perform along with her; their actions play out the conflicts at the heart of well-known fairytales. Woodgate then records these bent fairytales; the exhibition will include photographs from previous performances based on Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty.

Her current project for Main Library, Growing Up, is based on the English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk." The night before this Reading Room, Agustina will wake up sleepy corners of the Main Library auditorium, make magic with mysterious library collections, and perform with Anthony Spinello as Jack and Federico Nessi as The Giant.

Anthony Spinello is the founder and director of Spinello Gallery, which prides itself on exhibiting intelligent works of art in every medium by contemporary Miami emerging artists. The gallery “has become the playground for unorthodox and experimental artists who don’t easily fit into the confines of the traditional gallery space.”

As always, there will be coffee and cookies.

For more information about exhibitions and programs at the Miami-Dade Public Library System, visit http://mdpls.org/news/exhibitions/exhibitions.asp