Episode 79, No Kings But Us, Guests Robert Hodge and Russell Gonzalez

Interview in studio Big Medium is proud to present No Kings But Us with works by the collaborative HodgeKerr. “HodgeKerr is a collaboration between Robert Hodge (Houston) and Tim Kerr (Austin). Individually, their work is steeped in the rich history between music and pop culture, and they also share a deep interest in racial equality and human rights. Robert and Tim have long admired one another, from color palette to messaging to medium, and they have come together to entwine their creative vision. The collaborative back-and-forth between artists Robert Hodge and Tim Kerr – manifest in the ever-evolving exhibition No Kings But Us – is as compelling and intriguing for what is on display as for what is not. This exhibition presents the vivid yet amorphous residue of a contested, negotiated, and ultimately collaborative chronicle. It gathers swatches of 20th and 21st-century history as recounted by artists from different generations and backgrounds, who share as many crossovers as they do variations. No Kings But Us builds layers and erases others, creating wrought archaeology as the artists added, subtracted, obscured, interpreted, modified, and translated a mixture of initiatives and cues from one another. This work is battle-tested and ever-becoming, gathering a roadmap of historical figures as signposts in a history that weaves, circles, and rarely, if ever, proceeds in a straight line.”