A new exhibit built around the idea of distance has landed at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in downtown Mobile, bringing five artists from across three states together under one roof for the first time in the Port City. The show, titled “East 7,” is the work of Land Report, an artist collective whose members live and work hundreds of miles apart yet share a common creative language rooted not in geography, but in shared themes.
“We’re everywhere,” said Land Report artist Brian Jobe, describing the collective’s unusual structure. Jobe and fellow member Jason Brown are based in Tennessee, while Leticia Bajuyo, who once lived in Indiana, now teaches at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. The remaining three members of the group, Dave Jones, Pat Kikut and Shelby Shadwell, all live and work in Laramie, Wyoming.
Jobe splits his time between his own art practice and his role as executive director and co-founder of Tri-Star Arts, a Tennessee-based contemporary arts organization based in Nashville. Under his leadership, the organization runs exhibitions, artist talks and grant programs, and is preparing a statewide exhibition called the Tennessee Triennial. Tri-Star Arts has also placed a pair of sculptures by artist Hank Willis Thomas along the Memphis waterfront.
Despite living in different states, the members of Land Report share deep roots in Knoxville, Tennessee. Brown was Jobe’s undergraduate instructor at the University of Tennessee, and the two later became peers, mounting joint exhibitions together nearly a decade ago. Bajuyo is also a University of Tennessee graduate, finishing her degree around the same time Jobe began his studies there. Jones, meanwhile, studied under Brown as a graduate student and completed his Bachelor of Studio Art degree alongside Jobe. Jones has since built a long-running creative partnership with Kikut and Shadwell, regularly exhibiting alongside them.
“Our work just always seems to fit together in the same room, so we’re just going to keep riding the wave,” Jobe said of the group’s ongoing collaboration.
The collective’s path to Mobile traces back to Alabama Contemporary Art Center Executive Director Elizabet Elliott’s earlier work at the Mobile Museum of Art, where she first came across Land Report’s work while following another exhibition. She was drawn to the group’s concept: an artist collective defined not by where its members live, but by the ideas connecting their work.
“A big part of my job is to stalk and creep on artists,” Elliott said. “I saw their name somewhere, maybe part of an exhibition I was following, but loved the idea of a collective that’s not based on geographic location but based on themes in their work.”
After Elliott took on a curatorial role at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, she reached out to the group in early 2019. The connection deepened after both parties learned they had recently become regional regranting partners with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, setting the stage for the collaboration that ultimately brought the exhibit from the Smoky Mountains to the Gulf Coast.
Each artist in Land Report brings a distinct focus to the collective’s work. Bajuyo explores what she describes as “perceptions of value,” using her art to examine how social amnesia shapes consumer behavior. Brown’s work is influenced by the politics of mountaintop removal, while Jones is drawn to desert environments, working through experimental interactions, model-scale sculpture and large outdoor installations. Kikut’s paintings explore horizon lines, often drawing on flat Midwestern landscapes as inspiration, and Shadwell works with ephemeral imagery pulled from highway road cameras, mining operations and the optical effects of salt flats, translating them into drawing, sculpture and video installation.
Jobe’s own contribution to the show centers on movement and physical engagement, with pieces designed to draw viewers along specific pathways through the gallery. “If a sculpture asks something of you or invites a certain footpath, it engages your muscle memory,” Jobe said. “So, if you have a big art day, see a lot of work like during a day in New York City, and there’s almost like sensory overload, you may be more likely to remember pieces that ask your body to do something.”
That philosophy is on display in Jobe’s piece “Mirror Extended (5),” one of three of his works featured in the Mobile show. The installation consists of fifteen found window screens standing in a row, separated by pavers chalked to create a color spectrum that flows from one end of the piece to the other. Another Jobe work in the exhibit, “Hot Wells,” incorporates a geographic and geologic element of local origin, engaging visitors on a more sensory, barefoot level.
“East 7” is on view at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, located at 301 Conti Street in downtown Mobile, through Oct. 23. The exhibit marks the latest in a string of shows that have brought new artists and fresh perspectives to the gallery since Elliott took the helm, part of a broader effort to keep the venue’s programming in faster rotation and introduce local audiences to voices from beyond the region.