Melissa McGill's Red Regatta returns with book and London exhibition

New York-based artist Melissa McGill (b. 1969) lived in Venice in the early 1990s and developed a deep personal connection to the city. Between May and September 2019, during the 58th Venice Biennale, she presented Red Regatta, a series of four large-scale site-specific performances on Venice's waterways. Fifty-two traditional boats with lateen sails—typical of the Adriatic and characterized by a trapezoidal shape—sailed in a choreographed regatta. McGill painted each sail in a different shade of red. The project has been revived with a monograph published by Marsilio Editore, featuring original texts by the artist and contributions from Silvio Testa, Chiara Spangaro, and all fifty-two boat owners who collaborated. A solo exhibition titled 'In Venice' has opened at Mazzoleni gallery in London, presenting works related to Red Regatta across various media: hand-painted photographic renderings, works made from sailcloth, works on paper, photographs, a glass installation, sound sculptures, and a new series of watercolor studies of the Venetian Lagoon. McGill stated that Red Regatta and related works speak simultaneously to an individual, intimate, local dimension of handmade things while emphasizing large-scale collective, public, and global community. Bringing people together for a common goal, on both intimate and collective scales, is central to her work.