Amanda Ross-Ho (American, born 1975) received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Her work is inspired by the material culture of the artist’s studio and the idea that everything in it—from old memorabilia to tools—can be recycled in the creative process. Ross-Ho’s distinctive installation, expressly conceived for this exhibition, is composed of photo-graphs, including a manipulated promotional poster for the 1984 film Irreconcilable Differences (a comedy about a child filing for divorce from her parents) and a mural-scale picture of studio residue printed on canvas, as well as a hand-drilled Sheetrock panel, propped against a wall, with an architectural presence. The drywall is covered with images scanned from craft manuals and photography textbooks as well as reprints of a close-up portrait taken by the artist’s mother in the 1970s and a composition with glasses taken by her father in the context of his work as a commercial photographer. Ross-Ho grew up in a family of artists and commercial photographers. In her work, she has said, “family structure is mined not for the nostalgic or for the autobiographical but rather as a fertile framework of proximal relationships and connectivity, as well as a peripheral zone that informs the self.” Within this framework, the artist renegotiates the roles of craft processes and applied photography in contemporary art practice.
