BEVERLY, MASS.- Montserrat College of Art Gallery will present Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy, Jan. 27 – March 5, 2024, at 23 Essex Street. The exhibition features the artist's compelling uses of the American flag – as subject and material – drawing on the Provincetown- based artist’s decades-long critique of patriotism, democracy and corporatism. A public reception and performance by the artist will be held on Jan. 28 from 6-8 pm. It is free and open to the public.

Drawing on his research and work about American symbolism, mythology, history, settler occupation, Native Nations and ecological concerns, Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy confronts our torrid and complicated history of what it means to be an American and how control of and access to the Land defines our personal and cultural identities. The project moves beyond “farm to table” to “Land to Land” - challenging the corporate supply chain to return to the Land, uncontaminated, from what’s taken. The artist’s project critiques poet Robert Frost’s unabashedly Colonialist poem The Gift Outright: “The land was ours before we were the land’s.”

The installation will highlight Critchley’s ongoing series of modified and fabricated American flags, recent editions fashioned with embroidered and appliqued iconic corporate logos of the legacy of the Standard Oil Company (1882-1911).

Jay Critchley: Democracy of the Land, Inc., FLAGrancy is a continuation of Critchley’s long-term project examining the materiality of place, employing sand, peat, fish skins, feathers, water, motor oil, Christmas trees and gathered plastic tampon applicators washed up and gathered on beaches. The Land and ocean he navigates are his pallet.

Since the early 1980s, Critchley has created corporate entities that provide visible platforms for confronting the unrivaled influence and control of corporations on the ecology of the democratic process and the Land. His TEDx Talk: “Portrait of the Artist as a Corporation” proposes that since corporations have the rights of individuals, why can’t individuals have the rights of corporations, such as bankruptcy protection and tax write offs?

“We must recognize the Rights of Nature and Tribal Sovereignty, to listen to the Land and let the Land speak, in all its disparate elements, the cacophony of our relative’s voices from the microbes to the insects to the four-legged and two legged creatures,” states the artist. “It is patriotic to honor, celebrate and tend to the Land, but whose Land” he added. An exhibition of this singular, multidisciplinary artist’s work, which employs sculpture, installation, film, performance, corporate personas, architecture, writing and activism, will be accompanied by several public programs planned during the exhibition.

Jay Critchley is a Provincetown-based artist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Columbia. He is an interdisciplinary, conceptual and performance artist, writer and activist.

His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist as a Corporation. He founded the patriotic Old Glory Condom Corporation that won a controversial three-year legal battle for its US Trademark. His 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects. His artist residencies include: the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico; Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, NYC; Milepost 5, Portland, OR; Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry, Ireland; and Harvard University where he also lectured.

Jay recently was the keynote speaker at the UK Conference on Menstruation and Sustainability at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and spoke at the Nuffield Ireland Conference in Dublin, Ireland.

The Massachusetts State Legislature honored Jay as an artist and founder and director of the Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $6M+ for AIDS, women’s health and the community since 1988.