jay critchley, incorporated PRESS
SCULPTURE MAGAZINE: "Provincetown, MA - Jay Critchley", Suzanne Volmer, 2015 (also featured below)
ART IN AMERICA, advert, 2016
BOSTON GLOBE: "Jay Critchley, a 'born again artist'," Emeralde Jensen-Roberts, 2015
CAPE COD TIMES: "Jay Critchley elevates tweaking corporate America to art form", Debbie Forman, 2015
NEW TIMES (Broward Palm Beach): “Jay Critchley.” John P. Thomason, 2015
NPR: "Provincetown artist tackles big issues", Brian Morris, 2015
PROVINCETOWN BANNER: "Provincetown Art Association & Museum tributes artist-activist Jay Critchley with major show", Susan Rand Brown, 2015
BOSTON SPIRIT MAGAZINE: "Visionary Jester", 2015
BERKSHIRE FINE ARTS: "Jay Critchley, Incorporated", Charles Giuliano, 2015
PROVINCETOWN MAGAZINE: "The CEO of Provincetown", Steve Desroches, 2015 (also featured below)
JAY CRITCHLEY, INC CATALOG
ART IN AMERICA, advert, 2016
BOSTON GLOBE: "Jay Critchley, a 'born again artist'," Emeralde Jensen-Roberts, 2015
CAPE COD TIMES: "Jay Critchley elevates tweaking corporate America to art form", Debbie Forman, 2015
NEW TIMES (Broward Palm Beach): “Jay Critchley.” John P. Thomason, 2015
NPR: "Provincetown artist tackles big issues", Brian Morris, 2015
PROVINCETOWN BANNER: "Provincetown Art Association & Museum tributes artist-activist Jay Critchley with major show", Susan Rand Brown, 2015
BOSTON SPIRIT MAGAZINE: "Visionary Jester", 2015
BERKSHIRE FINE ARTS: "Jay Critchley, Incorporated", Charles Giuliano, 2015
PROVINCETOWN MAGAZINE: "The CEO of Provincetown", Steve Desroches, 2015 (also featured below)
JAY CRITCHLEY, INC CATALOG
SCULPTURE MAGAZINE
December 2015
By Suzanne Volmer
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Jay Critchley
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Jay Critchley creatively uses the codified capitalist convention of incorporation. As a CEO, he orchestrates his participation in public discourse, with fascinating outcomes regarding AIDS/HIV, nuclear energy, the carbon footprint, the impact of offshore sewage dumping, and development destabilization. His conceptualist activist is subversive. “Jay Critchley, Incorporated,” a recent retrospective curated by Bailey Bob Bailey, explored 30 years of interventionist practices. The show highlighted Critchley’s prescient mapping of off-kilter variants on the American Dream, delving deeply into a contextualization of his performativity, which was intellectually agile, affable, organic, original, and often hilarious.
The product placement strategy for Old Glory Condom Corporation, unfettered by sexual taboo, was accompanied by the patriotic slogan “Worn With Pride Country-Wide.” Critchley’s interpretation of Miss Tampon Liberty trod an equally fine line of decorum, with a campaign that included a processional robe adorned with 3,000 discarded tampon applicators and worn by the artist in his role as the ambassador of TACKI (Tampon Applicator Creative Klubs International.) It was developed to raise awareness of the negative impact of plastics in the environment. The lurid sensibility of TACKI, the jokery in Old Glory, and the perhaps inappropriate “Scat Chat” conversations excerpted from his radio program, which aired on WOMR in Provincetown, all address bigger, dirtier problems like AIDS/HIV and the environmental effects of Boston’s sewage outfall pipe.
Critchley’s voice has three-dimensional authenticity, with a marker’s mindset that expresses itself in meticulously crafted objects imbued with the porosity of conscientious objection. His work also has a playfulness that adds power to loaded constructs. Influenced by Joseph Beuys, Critchley uses pageantry to a similar shamanistic effect angled toward healing.
The retrospective included printed materials stamped with the authority of Critchley’s “NRC” corporation (Nuclear Recycling Consultants) and documentation of the action Nuke Soup, an exploratory dialogue regarding nuclear energy. Maskuerade Ball Project speaks of the global threat posed by epidemics in works neatly fashioned from surgical masks.
A re-creation of Critchley’s living room printed life-size onto a banner that hung like a shower curtain in a circular formation occupied the museum as a floor-to-ceiling installation. At the far end, flashing twin towers made from repurposed single-use cameras, could be interpreted as relating to Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” comment in an overall scheme of audience immersion. Helmet-like fascinators from Critchley’s International Re-Rooters Society (IRS) and the image of a burning pyre at his cleansing ritual on “Re-Rooters Day” (January 7, since 1983) held sway at the front of the museum. Ceremony, quirky logos, wordplay as double-speak, and debris reconfigured into new object-ness all exemplify Critchley’s creatively.
Although shocking to some, Critchley’s work has given him access to Three Mile Island. During his career, his work has been a vehicle for environmental legislation. He has garnered attention at Harvard University, and his performativity has engaged Manhattan’s creative elite at Freight + Volume gallery in New York City.
December 2015
By Suzanne Volmer
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Jay Critchley
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Jay Critchley creatively uses the codified capitalist convention of incorporation. As a CEO, he orchestrates his participation in public discourse, with fascinating outcomes regarding AIDS/HIV, nuclear energy, the carbon footprint, the impact of offshore sewage dumping, and development destabilization. His conceptualist activist is subversive. “Jay Critchley, Incorporated,” a recent retrospective curated by Bailey Bob Bailey, explored 30 years of interventionist practices. The show highlighted Critchley’s prescient mapping of off-kilter variants on the American Dream, delving deeply into a contextualization of his performativity, which was intellectually agile, affable, organic, original, and often hilarious.
The product placement strategy for Old Glory Condom Corporation, unfettered by sexual taboo, was accompanied by the patriotic slogan “Worn With Pride Country-Wide.” Critchley’s interpretation of Miss Tampon Liberty trod an equally fine line of decorum, with a campaign that included a processional robe adorned with 3,000 discarded tampon applicators and worn by the artist in his role as the ambassador of TACKI (Tampon Applicator Creative Klubs International.) It was developed to raise awareness of the negative impact of plastics in the environment. The lurid sensibility of TACKI, the jokery in Old Glory, and the perhaps inappropriate “Scat Chat” conversations excerpted from his radio program, which aired on WOMR in Provincetown, all address bigger, dirtier problems like AIDS/HIV and the environmental effects of Boston’s sewage outfall pipe.
Critchley’s voice has three-dimensional authenticity, with a marker’s mindset that expresses itself in meticulously crafted objects imbued with the porosity of conscientious objection. His work also has a playfulness that adds power to loaded constructs. Influenced by Joseph Beuys, Critchley uses pageantry to a similar shamanistic effect angled toward healing.
The retrospective included printed materials stamped with the authority of Critchley’s “NRC” corporation (Nuclear Recycling Consultants) and documentation of the action Nuke Soup, an exploratory dialogue regarding nuclear energy. Maskuerade Ball Project speaks of the global threat posed by epidemics in works neatly fashioned from surgical masks.
A re-creation of Critchley’s living room printed life-size onto a banner that hung like a shower curtain in a circular formation occupied the museum as a floor-to-ceiling installation. At the far end, flashing twin towers made from repurposed single-use cameras, could be interpreted as relating to Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” comment in an overall scheme of audience immersion. Helmet-like fascinators from Critchley’s International Re-Rooters Society (IRS) and the image of a burning pyre at his cleansing ritual on “Re-Rooters Day” (January 7, since 1983) held sway at the front of the museum. Ceremony, quirky logos, wordplay as double-speak, and debris reconfigured into new object-ness all exemplify Critchley’s creatively.
Although shocking to some, Critchley’s work has given him access to Three Mile Island. During his career, his work has been a vehicle for environmental legislation. He has garnered attention at Harvard University, and his performativity has engaged Manhattan’s creative elite at Freight + Volume gallery in New York City.