Three of my photographs of Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden are featured in the New Museum exhibition “Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969–1989.” The show
runs from Sept 9, 2012 until January 6, 2013.
The exhibition features original artwork, ephemera, and
performance documentation by artists who lived and worked on or near the Bowery
in New York. During these two decades, the Bowery was commonly identified with
the furthest extremes of metropolitan decline—municipal neglect, homelessness,
and substance abuse. As landlords and civil services abandoned the
neighborhood, the subsequent cheap rents and permissive atmosphere drew artists
downtown. The Bowery’s lofts provided a social network where painters, photographers,
performance artists, musicians, and filmmakers exchanged ideas and drew
inspiration from this concentration of creative activity.
In those years, I was living in a loft
in Chinatown with five other artists.
I began documenting Adam Purple's remarkable Earthwork in 1977, and was
there in 1985 when the city began destroying it to build low income
housing. Adam started the garden
in 1975 on the crime-ridden Lower East Side. By 1986, The Garden of Eden was world famous and had grown
to 15,000 square feet, spanning five lots. For Adam - a social activist, philosopher, artist and
revolutionary - The Garden of Eden was the medium of his political and artistic
expression.
This exhibition also includes works by Barbara Ess, Coleen
Fitzgibbon, Keith Haring, John Holmstrom, Marc H. Miller, Adrian Piper, Adam
Purple, Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Marcia Resnick, Christy Rupp, Arleen
Schloss, Eve Sonneman, Billy Sullivan, and Martin Wong. It was curated by Ethan Swan.
