Abandoned: Time and Place: Regional Showcase (2021)
September 9 to November 14, 2021
Abandoned: Time and Place: Regional Showcase (2021) was presented by The Chateau Gallery for the Louisville Photo Biennial from September 9 to November 14, 2021. The official Biennial record identifies the project as a virtual show featuring multiple artists, disciplines, and media. The Regional Showcase brings together nine artists based in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, with work addressing deserted and rediscovered locations, traces of human presence, local ruins, ephemera, memory, and place. Processes include photo prints on metal, digital composites on canvas, pigment and inkjet prints on fine art paper, signed editions, and prints on cradled birch board with encaustic medium and oil paint. The page also preserves Rachel Yurkovich's Black Grass project statement, which records a May 2016 visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and reflects on vegetation, radiation restrictions, and technological hubris. A companion International Showcase carries the same project across a wider geography. Together, the two pages document how a planned Biennial exhibition was separated and preserved online when a full physical presentation could not proceed. Explore the Regional catalog below, then continue to the International Showcase or TCG Gallery's permanent photography exhibition archive.
An Official Louisville Photo Biennial Project
Abandoned: Time and Place: Regional Showcase (2021) is part of TCG Gallery's permanent record of an official Louisville Photo Biennial project. The Biennial's own venue page lists The Chateau Gallery at 1230 South 3rd Street in Louisville, Kentucky, identifies Abandoned: Time and Place as a virtual show featuring multiple artists, disciplines, and media, and confirms the September 9 to November 14, 2021 dates. That independent listing matters. It places the exhibition inside a regional photography festival while the gallery's surviving page preserves the actual roster, processes, locations, dimensions, prices, and artist-supplied context.
Regional Ruins and Human Traces
The Regional Showcase focuses on photographers based in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Its catalog credits connect the exhibition to Hardinsburg, River Ridge and the former Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, Knox County, Northwestern Parkway, and other locations named by the artists. The original framing asks what deserted and rediscovered objects, places, and structures can reveal before their traces disappear. It treats abandonment as a question of memory and place rather than a generic visual style. Readers can move through the surviving entries without relying on a new interpretation of what each photograph supposedly shows.
Photographic Prints, Composite Images, and Mixed Process Work
The page documents a useful range of photographic processes. David Becker's entries are photo prints on metal. Tracy Robb is represented by digital composite images printed on canvas. Caleb Jordan Burchett and John Puffer use photographic inkjet printing on archival paper. Christopher Artell's credit identifies a signed and serialized photographic inkjet edition. Sean Patrick Hill's entry is a signed and numbered edition. Melissa Hall's two works combine prints on cradled birch board with encaustic medium and oil paint. Other catalog entries use photographic pigment printing on fine art paper. These details make the archive searchable by process while keeping the exhibition accurately framed as more than one kind of documentary photography.
Black Grass and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Regional page also preserves Rachel Yurkovich's statement for Black Grass (2018). The artist describes visiting Chernobyl, Ukraine in May 2016, thirty years after the nuclear power plant explosion. The statement discusses the restricted thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone, lingering radiation, vegetation moving through buildings and pavement, and the absence of ordinary human activity. It connects the project to a broader concern with the consequences of technological hubris and explicitly compares that concern with the Titanic disaster. The archive retains those claims as the artist's own account instead of turning them into anonymous gallery narration.
Why Regional and International Showcases Exist
The 2021 project survives as two companion pages: this Regional Showcase and a separate International Showcase. The planned presentation could not proceed at full physical scale, so the gallery preserved the Biennial project online and separated the two geographic groups rather than collapsing them into one page. The official Biennial record's virtual-show classification confirms the public form the exhibition ultimately took. Keeping the pages distinct protects both rosters and makes the regional focus legible without erasing the wider international project.
Explore the Regional Showcase catalog below. Continue to the companion International Showcase, browse the complete TCG Gallery exhibition archive, or review the current photography open calls.
Featured Artists
David Becker, Tracy Robb, Vyncex Gorlami, Caleb Jordan Burchett, Christopher Artell, John Puffer, Melissa Hall, Sean Patrick Hill, Rachel Yurkovich
Hardinsburg, 2020, Monographic Photo Print on Metal, 12in x 12in. Price: $225 USD - David Becker, New Albany, IN
The Drive In, 2019, 20in x 12in, Composite, Canvas Print. Price: $400 USD - Tracy Robb, Evansville, IN
Wayside, 2019, Digital Composite, Canvas Print, 16in x 16in. Price: $400 USD - Tracy Robb, Evansville, IN
Merchant's Ice Tower Control Panel, 2017, River Ridge, Photographic Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, 12in x18in. Price: $400 USD - Vyncex Gorlami, Louisville, KY
Missing Something in the Land, 2021, Photographic Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, 8in x 12in. Price: $135 USD - Caleb Jordan Burchett, Olive HIll, KY
Barnyard Fields, 2021, Photographic Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, 8in x 12in. Price: $135 USD - Caleb Jordan Burchett, Olive HIll, KY
Fun House, 2013, IAAP, Photographic Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, Signed and Serialized Edition, 12in x 18in. Price: $350 USD - Christopher Artell, Louisville, KY
Generals House, 2019, River Ridge, Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, Photographic Print on Metal, 15in x10in. Price: $225 USD - David Becker, New Albany, IN
Community Center, 2018, River Ridge, Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, Photographic Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, 12in x18in. Price: $400 USD - Vyncex Gorlami, Louisville, KY
Schoolhouse: Knox County, Indiana, 2021, Photographic Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, 16in x 26in. Price: $275 USD - John Puffer, Vincennes, IN
You Left Long Ago, 2020, 12in x 18in, Print on Cradled Birch Board with Encaustic Medium and Oil Paint. Price: $250 USD - Melissa Hall, Lexington, KY
Northwestern Parkway, 2021, Photographic Inkjet Print on Archival Paper, Signed and Numbered Edition, 11in x 14in. Price: $400 USD - Sean Patrick Hill, Louisville, KY
The Sky Has Fallen, 2020, 18in x 12in, Print on Cradled Birch Board with Encaustic Medium and Oil Paint. Price: $250 USD - Melissa Hall, Lexington, KY
Black Grass, 2018
Rachel Yurkovich, Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Black Grass focuses on the abandoned remnants of humanity and the life that thrives without it in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The Zone is an area in a 30 km perimeter around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor where people are forbidden to enter without authorization and an escort due to the harmful levels of lingering radiation.
When I traveled to Chernobyl, Ukraine in May of 2016, it had been thirty years since the nuclear power plant exploded. Spring was just beginning, and green was erupting from unexpected places. I was awed by the vegetation’s ability to break through buildings and pavement; it seemed as though no material could stop it. Thirty years without human influence turned a once populated city into a wildlife sanctuary. The exclusion zone was strangely one of the most peaceful places I have ever visited. I had the impression that there was no chance of encountering another human besides the few I came with.
This project ties into my previous work which brings to light consequences of people's thoughtless actions. Similar to the Titanic catastrophe, where excess and overconfidence in technology resulted in too few lifeboats being available for passengers, the Chernobyl disaster demonstrates the potential repercussions of humanity’s hubris.