Abuzz, a solo exhibition of Amber Imrie-Situnayake’s fiber-based installations. Hum is an interactive installation of eight hanging hive/cocoons made from woven fiber and incorporating hand-embroidered insects and LED lights. Hanging at shoulder height, visitors are invited to stand under the cocoons, placing their heads inside, to experience the sounds of each hive’s insect colony. In addition to Hum, Imrie-Situnayake will create new work for the exhibition, which will manifest as an explorers desk. The desk will hold a collection of embroidered specimens, felted wool rocks, and photos printed on fabric with fiber alterations.
A native of Arkansas, Imrie-Situnayake currently lives and works in Oakland. In her work she looks to define natural surroundings by re-fabricating them as domestic goods. She works with historically craft based and domestically ripe materials as a way to relate to the home, the safe, and the secure. Her work explores the blurred edge between the domesticated and the wild.
In 2013, Amber graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Studio Art and was awarded ‘Excellence in Sculpture’. In 2014, she founded Venison Magazine, an online contemporary art magazine. In October of 2014, Amber studied in Amsterdam, Holland at art residency, NDSM Treehouse. In 2015, Amber stayed in Paonia, Colorado as artist-in-residence at Elsewhere Studios. Amber’s Installation ‘Hum’ which was envisioned at Elsewhere, was accepted by Paseo Interactive art festival in Taos, NM as one of their twenty-five installation for 2015. In August of 2015 Amber received a traveling artist grant from Fayetteville Underground for her exhibition, Buffalo, a site-specific installation based of the local Arkansas River. In late 2015 Amber Founded Art Camp, an open source art professionalism residency based in California. Imrie-Situnayake was recently accepted to Stanford University and will begin her MFA studies this fall.
