Sticky Wicket

On Friday, April 9, from 6 to 9 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will premiere three new exhibitions linked to our interaction and response to landscape and nature: Icons of Absence : Icons of Presence, the expressive and lush oil paintings of Dana Saulnier that merge landscape and figurative elements in an evocative dialogue; a natural response, the exquisitely and intuitively executed black and white sumi ink paintings of Nancy Fletcher Cassell that tap the unconscious mind and intuitive responses to nature; and sticky wicket, a site-specific installation by Andrew Loughnane that playfully subverts the lawn game of croquet through the examination of social conventions and competitive instincts.

If you encounter a sticky wicket you are probably in the middle of "a difficult or delicate problem or situation" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Andrew Loughnane’s site-specific installation sticky wicket certainly fits that description. Conceived as an indoor croquet field, complete with artificial grass, sticky wicket is both art and game.

Loughnane (Taylor Mill, Ky.) creates public works that invite viewer participation. Since returning to the Cincinnati area in 2001, Loughnane has initiated a number of installations that blur the distinction between art and everyday activities and seek to make art equally accessible to all segments of the general public. sticky wicket playfully subverts croquet, the traditional lawn game in which players hit wooden balls with wooden mallets through a series of nine or ten arches, or wickets. As a visual artist, Loughnane is drawn to the dark side of the game manifested in "extreme croquet" that dispenses with social conventions and brings out the true human nature in its participants, as well as the verbal play of associated words such as "court and courtship," "sticky wicket," "balls," and even "shot." Scheduled "matches" will take place, and equipment will be available to the public for impromptu games.

Andrew Loughnane attended Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany from 1997-98 and 2000-01 as a foreign exchange student in Germanic studies, philosophy, and art history. He received a bachelor of arts in Germanic studies from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana in 2000. His public installations have been featured locally at Unit 2, Southgate House and Semantics. Also a talented writer, Loughnane was most recently a columnist for ArtSpike Media in Cincinnati.