Democracy of the land inc.: Flagrancy - Standard oil, us flag, mixedmedia, 10'H x 15'w, 2025
For Immediate Release
Contact: [email protected]
Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy Exhibition opening
January 27th at Montserrat Gallery
January 27 – March 5, 2025
Reception + Performance: January 28, 6-8 pm.
Various related events to follow
BEVERLY -- Montserrat College of Art Gallery will present Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land,
Inc., FLAGrancy, Jan. 27 – March 5, 2025, at 23 Essex Street. The exhibition features the artist's
compelling uses of the American flag – as subject and material – drawing on the Provincetown-
based artist’s decades-long critique of patriotism, democracy and corporatism. A public
reception and performance by the artist will be held on Jan. 28 from 6-8 pm. It is free and open
to the public.
Drawing on his research and work about American symbolism, mythology, history, settler
occupation, Native Nations and ecological concerns, Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc.,
FLAGrancy confronts our torrid and complicated history of what it means to be an American
and how control of and access to the Land defines our personal and cultural identities. The
project moves beyond “farm to table” to “Land to Land” - challenging the corporate supply
chain to return to the Land, uncontaminated, from what’s taken. The artist’s project critiques
poet Robert Frost’s unabashedly Colonialist poem The Gift Outright: “The land was ours before
we were the land’s.”
The installation will highlight Critchley’s ongoing series of modified and fabricated American
flags, recent editions fashioned with embroidered and appliqued iconic corporate logos of the
legacy of the Standard Oil Company (1882-1911). This Rockefeller monopoly was broken up by
muckraker Ida Tarbell in 1911, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, for violating
“restraint of trade” under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy is a continuation of Critchley’s long-term
project examining the materiality of place, employing sand, peat, fish skins, feathers, water, motor
oil, Christmas trees and gathered plastic tampon applicators washed up and gathered on
beaches. The Land and ocean he navigates are his pallet.
Since the early 1980s, Critchley has created corporate entities that provide visible platforms for
confronting the unrivaled influence and control of corporations on the ecology of the
democratic process and the Land. His TEDx Talk: “Portrait of the Artist as a corporation”
proposes that since corporations have the rights of individuals, why can’t individuals have the
rights of corporations, such as bankruptcy protection and tax write-offs?
“We must recognize the Rights of Nature and Tribal Sovereignty, to listen to the Land and let the
Land speak, in all its disparate elements, the cacophony of our relative’s voices from the
microbes to the insects to the four-legged and two legged creatures,” states the artist.
“It is patriotic to honor, celebrate and tend to the Land, but whose Land” he added.
An exhibition of this singular, multidisciplinary artist’s work, which employs sculpture,
installation, film, performance, corporate personas, architecture, writing and activism, will be
accompanied by several public programs planned during the exhibition.
About Jay Critchley
Jay Critchley is a Provincetown-based artist whose work has traversed the globe, showing
across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Ireland,
Scotland, and Columbia. He is an interdisciplinary, conceptual and performance artist, writer
and activist.
His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist
as a Corporation. He founded the patriotic Old Glory Condom Corporation that won a
controversial three-year legal battle for its US Trademark His 2015 survey show at the
Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt,
Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects.
His artist residencies include: the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico; Fundacion Valparaiso,
Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts
Center, NYC; Milepost 5, Portland, OR; Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry, Ireland; and Harvard University
where he also lectured.
Jay recently was the keynote speaker at the UK Conference on Menstruation and Sustainability
at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and spoke at the Nuffield Ireland Conference in
Dublin, Ireland.
The Massachusetts State Legislature honored Jay as an artist and founder and director of the
Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $6M+ for
AIDS, women’s health and the community since 1988.
Related Exhibition Events:
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 28, 6-8pm, Montserrat Gallery
Artists Conversation -Jay Critchley and Ari Montford: Wednesday, January 29 th , 11-12pm,
Room 101, 23 Essex Street
Screening: The Film work of Jay Critchley: Wednesday, February 12, 6:00pm, Room 101, 23
Essex Street
Please check the gallery website https://www.montserrat.edu/galleries for updated event information.
Contact: [email protected]
Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy Exhibition opening
January 27th at Montserrat Gallery
January 27 – March 5, 2025
Reception + Performance: January 28, 6-8 pm.
Various related events to follow
BEVERLY -- Montserrat College of Art Gallery will present Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land,
Inc., FLAGrancy, Jan. 27 – March 5, 2025, at 23 Essex Street. The exhibition features the artist's
compelling uses of the American flag – as subject and material – drawing on the Provincetown-
based artist’s decades-long critique of patriotism, democracy and corporatism. A public
reception and performance by the artist will be held on Jan. 28 from 6-8 pm. It is free and open
to the public.
Drawing on his research and work about American symbolism, mythology, history, settler
occupation, Native Nations and ecological concerns, Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc.,
FLAGrancy confronts our torrid and complicated history of what it means to be an American
and how control of and access to the Land defines our personal and cultural identities. The
project moves beyond “farm to table” to “Land to Land” - challenging the corporate supply
chain to return to the Land, uncontaminated, from what’s taken. The artist’s project critiques
poet Robert Frost’s unabashedly Colonialist poem The Gift Outright: “The land was ours before
we were the land’s.”
The installation will highlight Critchley’s ongoing series of modified and fabricated American
flags, recent editions fashioned with embroidered and appliqued iconic corporate logos of the
legacy of the Standard Oil Company (1882-1911). This Rockefeller monopoly was broken up by
muckraker Ida Tarbell in 1911, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, for violating
“restraint of trade” under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy is a continuation of Critchley’s long-term
project examining the materiality of place, employing sand, peat, fish skins, feathers, water, motor
oil, Christmas trees and gathered plastic tampon applicators washed up and gathered on
beaches. The Land and ocean he navigates are his pallet.
Since the early 1980s, Critchley has created corporate entities that provide visible platforms for
confronting the unrivaled influence and control of corporations on the ecology of the
democratic process and the Land. His TEDx Talk: “Portrait of the Artist as a corporation”
proposes that since corporations have the rights of individuals, why can’t individuals have the
rights of corporations, such as bankruptcy protection and tax write-offs?
“We must recognize the Rights of Nature and Tribal Sovereignty, to listen to the Land and let the
Land speak, in all its disparate elements, the cacophony of our relative’s voices from the
microbes to the insects to the four-legged and two legged creatures,” states the artist.
“It is patriotic to honor, celebrate and tend to the Land, but whose Land” he added.
An exhibition of this singular, multidisciplinary artist’s work, which employs sculpture,
installation, film, performance, corporate personas, architecture, writing and activism, will be
accompanied by several public programs planned during the exhibition.
About Jay Critchley
Jay Critchley is a Provincetown-based artist whose work has traversed the globe, showing
across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Ireland,
Scotland, and Columbia. He is an interdisciplinary, conceptual and performance artist, writer
and activist.
His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist
as a Corporation. He founded the patriotic Old Glory Condom Corporation that won a
controversial three-year legal battle for its US Trademark His 2015 survey show at the
Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt,
Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects.
His artist residencies include: the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico; Fundacion Valparaiso,
Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts
Center, NYC; Milepost 5, Portland, OR; Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry, Ireland; and Harvard University
where he also lectured.
Jay recently was the keynote speaker at the UK Conference on Menstruation and Sustainability
at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and spoke at the Nuffield Ireland Conference in
Dublin, Ireland.
The Massachusetts State Legislature honored Jay as an artist and founder and director of the
Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $6M+ for
AIDS, women’s health and the community since 1988.
Related Exhibition Events:
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 28, 6-8pm, Montserrat Gallery
Artists Conversation -Jay Critchley and Ari Montford: Wednesday, January 29 th , 11-12pm,
Room 101, 23 Essex Street
Screening: The Film work of Jay Critchley: Wednesday, February 12, 6:00pm, Room 101, 23
Essex Street
Please check the gallery website https://www.montserrat.edu/galleries for updated event information.
Without Water #6: Rust
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. – H. Auden.
For the artist, the iconic private swimming pools that artist David Hockney celebrated - beginning in the carefree 1960s - 43,000 of them in LA, become containers and vessels of precious, sequestered water, contaminated, continuously redefining our relationship to water, the Land and our sustenance.
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. – H. Auden.
For the artist, the iconic private swimming pools that artist David Hockney celebrated - beginning in the carefree 1960s - 43,000 of them in LA, become containers and vessels of precious, sequestered water, contaminated, continuously redefining our relationship to water, the Land and our sustenance.
No Snow Globe series: motor oil, mixed media, 3.5" h x 2" w, 2024