4 JUNE – 25 JULY 2010

Closing & Live Music Performance: Saturday, 24 July at 8pm

Opening reception: Friday, 4 June, from 6:00pm / Live Music Performance at 9pm

The Deaths of Hamilton Fish is a musical project that weaves together real and fictional characters into a murder mystery that's set in New York during the 1930’s. The story will be told through film, music and artifacts in the form of an installation in the gallery. The story and songs are written and performed by Rachel Mason.

The Deaths of Hamilton Fish project is based on a single historic coincidence. The research for the project has been ongoing since 2005. When Mason was researching a newspaper story on the date of Albert Fish’s electrocution at Sing Sing prison, she discovered an article about another Fish's death in the same newspaper.

The story was written based on the lives of two men who died on the same day. They were opposites in every imaginable way, but had one thing in common; they shared the same name, Hamilton Fish. One was the serial killer Albert Hamilton Fish, the other, Hamilton Fish II, son of the Governor of New York State, whose political family extends back to the founding fathers of America. In this fictional depiction of events and personages, Hamilton Fish II searches personal salvation by attempting to find his murderous doppelganger.

The film was shot at, and near locations where the real events occurred, such as an abandoned house in Sleepy Hollow, NY, the haunted Untermeyer park, and the burial grounds and church of the Hamilton Fish family.

Cast: Dmitriy Ivolgin, Jeff Lunger, Rachel Mason, Adrienne Sneed

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Rachel Mason is a songwriter, performer and sculptor. Trained as a sculptor at Yale, her work finds autobiographical ties to history as she inserts herself into the minds of characters in sculpture and video. Mason has created guerrilla performances ranging from a music performance on a window ledge facing Broadway in which she descended into the arms of police officers, to a rock opera with 30 dancers at the Park Avenue Armory. She has recorded five full-length albums, and is included on a compilation of music with Devendra Banhardt, Josephine Foster, Diane Cluck and Kath Bloom. Mason performs solo, with collaborators and at times backed by a full band, alternating between costume changes. Dubbed “Marvelously Strange” by Jerry Saltz of the Village Voice, Mason is a singer and multi-instrumentalist playing drums, guitar, piano and accordion. Mason's sculptures and music have been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Flash Art, Art News, and Artforum. Mason's work has been shown at the James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard, Circus Gallery, and she has performed at venues including the Kunsthalle Zurich, The Park Avenue Armory, Tonic, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, The Slipper Room, and The Empac Center for Performance in Troy.