Siara Berry, ‘On the Grounds Of’ at the Charles Allis Art Museum

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'On the Grounds Of' by Siara Berry

I recently attended a summer group show, the kind with one piece by each of a dozen young artists, who had come to the small gallery with large entourages of cool creative friends, making the opening a hot mess of young talented bodies. I cut my teeth in such melees, so I’m used to the sardine treatment and noise, but I noticed I had phantom leg anxiety about stepping into floor sculpture, of which there was none. When I mentioned this reflex out loud, the art handler/artist I was talking to mentioned that he doesn’t move or hang nearly as much sculpture as he used to, and offered cheerfully, “It’s all paintings now, a lot easier for me these days.” 

That’s an anecdotal account of things of course, but when one checks it next to their Instagram feed, auction results, and a laundry list of contemporary art darlings, it tracks. We’re in a painting moment and have been for over a decade. Which is why I was so excited to stop by the Charles Allis Museum to see artist-in-residence Siara Berry’s sculptural installation, On the Grounds Of,which is on display through October, but is definitely something to see before the greens fade to ochre and rust. Berry represents an increasingly rare example of a young artist working in the realm of conceptual object-making and language in a playful, hands-on manner. Even rarer, that she’s delicately adept at constructing things around ideas. When we do see sculpture these days, it often veers away from painting as much as possible, toward the realm of monumentality and fabricated excess, leaving that ambiguous middle territory lonelier and lonelier. 

This kind of hollowing out of the middle is something we see in other areas of culture, too. Gone are the glory days of the $20 million Albert Brooks films about adult relationships, as well as down-the-middle news, politics, cuisine, you name it. Berry’s work at Charles Allis aims its gun at another area of hollowed-outness: the American domestic groundscape. From what was once an aspirational derivative of the aristocratic country estate, American domestic landscape sensibilities have developed its own runaway set of codes, pretensions, and cautions. 

Elegance and Humor

Berry dresses down this dimension of the world with formal elegance, conceptual precision, and a lot of humor. What catches the eye first at Allis is a series of white concrete balls painted to appear wrapped in Tyvek fabrik. On closer inspection they look like some kind of bomb, with rope fuses. Smoke bombs, perhaps? Explosive vermin eradicators? Snaking around these insistent visual anchors is an arrangement of cylindrical plugs from golf greens that offers a genius special and conceptual inversion of the “hole-in-one.” Each vertical work bears a red flag that reads as both a lawn pesticide warning and pin flag, perhaps letting us know that par should be keeping the hole whole, rather than putting for birdie. 

In the yard closer to the house stands an eye-height four-way sign that alternates between red and blue displaying the words “YAY” and “NAY.” The sculpture is a handsome and cheeky spin on the American political yard sign. It’s also quietly hilarious. Berry ingeniously uses an all-caps Helvetica bold for the sign and plain 2 x 2 pine for the structure, as a neutral, minimal counterpoint to the standardized, mindless look-and-feel of stars-and-serifs contemporary political designs. 

About this parting installation assembled from her residency, Berry states: “My practice is a critique of the American housing system and ideals and the Allis–a historic home—illustrates the deep roots of these perceptions.” I can add to her modest description that it’s also done with a voracious material curiosity that is somewhat lost in an image-happy world increasingly friendly to painting. And with ample helpings of wry humor sourced in conceptual and social critique. 

Oh yeah, and those “bombs?”… they’re housing “BOOMBS.” 

Yes, of course! Touché, Siara!

Openings July 2 – July 8, 2023

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Sunday, July 2, 10 a.m.–4 pm

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• July 2, 2:00 pm–3:00 pm

Museum of Wisconsin Art

• Intention Setting and The Art-Making Experience (free for members, admission required)
• Wednesday, July 5, 10:30 am–11:30 am

James May Gallery 

• Opening Reception for “Family Dinner” 
• Friday, July 7, 5:0–8 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Saturday, July 8, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries
• Saturday, July 8, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-in Tour: Highlights from the Collection 
• In Person
• Sunday, June 18, 2–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Saturday, July 8, 2–3 p.m.

Saint Kate–the Arts Hotel

• AIR Time, Art and Studio Tour. Cocktail and studio tour with artist Jeff Zimpel
• Saturday, July 8, 5 p.m.