In a decommissioned Red Hook Amazon warehouse turned “post-industrial anti-space,” Elva Quirk’s latest solo exhibition, Gutter Liturgy, oozes with a mischievous conceptualism that makes collectors and curators nervous. The show, composed mainly of disconnected plumbing fixtures connected to AI-generated Gregorian chant loops, can be seen as a radical act of eco-catharsis.
Quirk describes herself as a “hydro-existentialist with trauma-resistant leanings.” After briefly attending the University of Helsinki’s unaccredited “School of Conceptual Art,” Quirk relocated to Bushwick, where she co-founded the ephemeral performance collective Bleach Baptism (2017–2018), best remembered for its site-specific protests against linear time and gymnastics.
Her current body of work, comprised of installations with titles like “Pipe Dream in E Flat Minor” and “Lady Faucetta”, explores what Quirk calls “the innate spirituality of drainage.” Central to the exhibition is Plumb Divine (2024), a four-foot-tall copper U-bend suspended in a vat of artisanal broth. Every seven minutes, the structure emits a low gurgle—said to be a digitally slowed-down sample of Quirk’s childhood dog barking at a hat. The piece appears to interrogate the relationship between domestic sanitation and something akin to repressed dlonging.
“What’s important,” says Quirk in an unscheduled artist talk she delivered to a disoriented tour group from Ohio, “is not what the pipe is draining, but who. I’m draining myself, constantly. This is my confession booth. But for greywater.”
The exhibition is curated by Randle Nuxx, former DJ and current head of curatorial programming at the nonprofit space Spoil. Nuxx insists that Quirk’s work “confronts the infrastructure of belief with the believability of infrastructure,” adding that he hasn’t used traditional plumbing in four years.
Critics have been divided. The Swindon Occasional called Gutter Liturgy “an important reminder that pipes, like dreams, can burst at any moment.” The Monthly Arsonist praised Quirk, although finished with a backhanded compliment, thanking her for “reminding us that art is best when it smells faintly of mildew.”
One cannot deny Quirk’s impact on the post-pandemic art landscape. In a time when most artists are turning inward or going digital, she dares to go downward—deep into the aesthetic sewers of the subconscious.
Gutter Liturgy runs through July 17 at Spoil Gallery.
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