Virginia Overton’s site-specific sculptural installations explore the untapped potentialities of objects associated with industry and infrastructure. Her materials often include rope, car parts, trusses, lighting, lumber, logs, cement, as well as their attendant machines, such as cranes, pickup trucks, and gantries that hoist and move them. Her materials frequently behave performatively – modifying a site by obstructing, bisecting or echoing its inherent qualities. For The Milk of Dreams, Overton presents two sculptural works for the Arsenale, the heart of the Venetian naval industry since the early 12th century. Overton suspends in the water spheres reminiscent of glass floats used by seamen to keep fishnets, longlines and droplines adrift, in the luminous pink hue of Venetian streetlamps. Encased within hand-knotted rope netting, Overton’s buoy rises and falls with the tides, highlighting the lagoon’s variability. A second sculpture comprises a large-scale tulip-like form. Cast from pre-existing molds typically used for architectural tunnels, three vertically interlocked concrete segments create an upright structure, dotted with circular pink glass “windows,” forming a triangular aperture to the sky. Additional elements along the waterfront function as benches, offering viewers a moment of repose amidst the physically and psychically layered historical strata of the Arsenale.
Madeline Weisburg
