Joey Terrill: Still Here
Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills
January 13 – March 3, 2024
Video by L.A. Art Documents / www.laartdocuments.com
Text Source: https://www.marcselwynfineart.com/
Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to present Joey Terrill: Still Here the gallery’s first exhibition of work by the artist.
As an openly gay Chicano, Joey Terrill’s career as an artist has run parallel to his evolution as a social justice advocate. Employing the bold color and charismatic aesthetics of advertising and comics, Terrill has addressed the politics of sexual identity, the media’s lack of representation of the Chicano community and the extraordinary losses suffered during the AIDS crisis. Though the narratives depicted are autobiographical – a dose of Videx rests on the breakfast table alongside a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter - Terrill’s use of familiar household objects allows the work to remain effortlessly inclusive. Who doesn’t understand the great pleasure of breakfast or the tyranny of a daily medication?
Joey Terrill was born in 1955 and is a second-generation native of East Los Angeles, a region central to Chicano life, art and culture in the United States. He attended Cathedral High School where he became involved with La Huelga and helped with the Caesar Chavez-led grape and lettuce boycott. During this time, he became aware of Sister Corita Kent, a longstanding faculty member of the Immaculate Heart College art department, who championed progressive, socially conscious artworks made with a pop sensibility. This stance corresponded with Terrill’s ambitions, and he enrolled there in 1973.