Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories

January 21

- March 25, 2023

Inspired by the geology of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, this immersive installation by Richard Turner, Michael Davis, and Paul Harris explores the connections between rocks, history, and Earth's creative powers.

Works by
Richard Turner, Michael Davis, and Paul Harris

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Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories presents a speculative geo-history of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. An installation by Southern California artists Richard Turner, Michael Davis, and Paul Harris, this exhibition opens with a free public reception at Angels Gate Cultural Center on Saturday, January 21st from 3 – 5pm.

Inspired by the unsettled geology of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Uplifting Tales and Eroded Histories immerses visitors in a ‘petriverse’ in which rocks are read as history, prophecy, and manifestations of Earth’s creative powers. The first gallery, designed to seem disrupted by a recent landslide, features skewed angles, precarious shelves, vertiginous 3-D images, and a jarring video. The troubled relations and tangled tales of Sapiens and stone it evokes are dramatically contrasted by the contemplative calm of the second gallery, which ushers visitors into a space for rock study and sitting with stones. Informed by an aesthetic of stone appreciation, it fosters affiliations between the deep-time journeys of stones and our short-lived moment on the planet.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance, Los Angeles County Arts & Culture, and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

[Press Kit]