Richard Newton, 'Have You Seen My Privacy?'

R Newton Legacy — Richard Newton held hostage by his broken television, his faded memories of fleeting fame, and his washed up American Dream. The Man Who Could Eat Glass, 1980 photo credit: Eric Engler

Beginning in February 1 through April 24, 2011, Richard Newton was in residence in the main gallery. His project, Have You Seen My Privacy, involved multiple presentations of video, ephemera, and correspondence accompanied by public dialogues with artists active in Southern California from 1960 onwards. Newton will actively collaborate with younger artists to develop three performances allied with the presentations.

Artist Statement
We would like to believe that the privacy risks we artists took in the ‘60s and ‘70s produced a legacy that can be called progress. But in the 21^stCentury, privacy battles are still raging all around us; perhaps the boundaries have shifted, and on some issues we may have been pushed back. Who would have thought that marriage would be such a big issue? Will we ever accept that women are the keepers of their own bodies? And did we really think Big Brother would be watching as closely as half a million cameras in London, dwarfing the estimated 10,000 cameras watching Chicago? I propose to work with three younger artists or artist groups to revisit or renew our view of what privacy means in America.

Artist Bio
Richard Newton, a.ka. Ric Marin, was born in Oakland, California, 1948. Mr. Newton has shown artworks, artists’ books, films & video and presented live performances and site specific installations throughout the world. His one-of-a-kind books were shown at DOCUMENTA in Kassel, Germany. In the 1975 performance, I take you to a room in Brawley and we smell onions, Mr. Newton presented himself as a bride, a prostitute and an artist enslaved by success. The performance explored objectification, male-female and transgender identity. Some performances by Mr. Newton have found him in unusual places. For the 1980 PUBLIC SPIRIT FESTIVAL, the audience found him performing behind a chained door in a downtown derelict hotel. Titled, Get Under The Table, Don’t Look at the Windows, this performance dealt with family relationships, the nature of infinity and the threat of nuclear destruction or self-destruction by way of alcoholism.

Participating Artists

Megyn Cawley
Monet Clark
Tania Katan
Emery Martin
Scarlett Rouge
Stephen Seemayer
Barbara T Smith
Jade Thacker
Tiffany Trenda
Marjan Vayghan