Dismal is a two part project.
Working Out: At first working on site in The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. One week located in the hostile hot and humid summer landscape of this active swamp. Field trips with actions and discoveries from wild natural landscapes to the working communities found in these swamplands.
Working In: A series of related Dismal actions over four days in the New York Gallery of Fergus McCaffrey in Chelsea,s West village. Using materials and objects found and brought from the swamp and its communities, from without to within.

This project makes the correlation between remarks by the now president Donald Trump re the "the swamp" and the "Great Dismal Swamp" itself. It sets out to draw and action the byline and research and discover the swamp and its archaeology and hinterland by objects that are found there and then may represent it. The body as conduit and actions as carriers.

Nigel Rolfe uses finely ground natural minerals to create gestured marks on himself, nearby materials, and the space around him. After the performance, the powder remains, a suggestion of the symbolic dust we all emerge from and to which we all return.

REMAINS brings together a diverse group of performance-based artists who use their bodies as a tool and a way of effecting change both materially and conceptually.