Erin Shirref

Erin Shirreff was born in British Columbia and lives and works in New York City. In residence at Chinati during June and July 2011, she exhibited new work, all cast objects, at the end of her stay. Shirreff’s medium is film, sculpture, and photography—more specifically the fusing of these methods (e.g., a photograph of a sculpture; a video of a still image). Shirreff creates formal portraits of objects she has constructed or sculpted to resemble architectural fragments, geological artifacts, or prehistoric specimens. Roden Crater (2009), her fifteen-minute single-channel video loop, composed through re-photographing (hundreds of times, under changing yet controlled light conditions) a single found image of James Turrell’s grand project, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1, Sculpture Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ballroom Marfa, White Flag Projects in St. Louis, and the Power Plant in Toronto. In 2010 she mounted a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and exhibited at the Aspen Art Museum, MCA Denver, and Lisa Cooley in New York in summer 2011. Her work is also included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY.