For the last four years, Colorado-based artist, Pamela Joseph has been working on her traveling show, The Sideshow of the Absurd. This installation of "exhibits" investigates turn of the century circus freak shows through a combination of humorous drawings, paintings, sculpture, mechanical devices, and computer imagery. The Sideshow explores the visual culture of traveling circuses but at the same time addresses contemporary notions of female-ness and female power. Consisting of a series of three-dimensional sculptures that gyrate, twist and sway through the use of built-in mechanical devices, each sculpture features a woman in a potentially precarious situation: The Cat Woman raising a heavy cat above her head, The Virgins dwarfed by huge golden, winged unicorns and The Lady Swordswallower, etc. Accompanied by large, colorful banners and carnival sounds, the works draw viewers in to emotionally participate in each scenario. The very notion of a sideshow implies “otherness,” the displaying of freaks, people “who are not like us.” Therefore, an underlying theme of the exhibition is tolerance, facing viewers with difference as a source of power and strength rather than fear.

Pamela Joseph was recently awarded a 2001 Visual Artist Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts. The panelists described her work as “well executed, powerful, and edgy ... [the artist] combines large-scale work with intricate detail.”

The Sideshow's inaugural venue at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art opened on January 12, 2001 with the largest attendance in the history of the Museum. Following BMoCA, the Sideshow traveled to the Bachman Gallery at the Northern Indiana Arts Association in Muncie, Indiana, also attended by record-breaking audiences. The Sideshow will continue to travel nationally to the Erie Art Museum, Erie, Pennsylvania (June 21-September 2, 2002), the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (September 14–October 20, 2002), and the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood in Hollywood, Florida during the Spring/Summer of 2003.

The Sideshow opens at the Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque on Tuesday, November 11, 2001 until January 11, 2002. The opening reception is Friday, November 16th from 5:30–7:30 pm. A talk by the artist is scheduled for Tuesday, December 4th at 5:30 pm.

For more information, please contact:
Chip Ware
c/o Jonson Gallery , University of New Mexico
1909 Las Lomas NE, Albuquerque, NM 87131
phone: (505) 277-4967 - fax: (505) 277-3188
cware@unm.edu

Or contact the artist directly:
Pamela Joseph
407 Aspen Oak Drive
Aspen, CO 81611
phone: (970) 920-4098 - fax: (970) 920-2242
manose@rof.net
www.manose.com