Inventory Beyond the Fence Line

Exhibition. 7 works on view at ///nuns.below.about, 428 W VENANGO ST, Franklinville. The wall is circular: walking in either direction returns to the title wall. Use Tab to move between works and Enter to read a work’s wall label. Arrow keys move along the wall.

Seven works at a single point in the city, the first acquired in October 2025 and the most recent in January 2026. One commissioner: Streets Department. The museum did not solicit any of them.

The works are exhibited in order of acquisition. Visitors will notice that the subject does not change; the museum invites them to consider what does.

1. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 2 — Steel drum, oxidising paint over white primer, galvanised post, pedestrian frontage. Accession 18660743. Acquired October 29, 2025. 323 days on view. The drum dominates the composition, its white coating flaking away in irregular islands to expose a brown oxide beneath, and the whole assembly leans forward onto its drawbar so that the single rubber wheel carries almost nothing. A perforated galvanised post rises through the near field and divides the work from the parked car at left, giving the arrangement three distinct depths in a narrow span. As with its siblings at this site, the piece stands on pedestrian concrete rather than within the fenced yard behind it, and the fence reads as a line the collection has quietly crossed. The museum preserves it for the clarity of that crossing.
2. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 3 — Galvanised steel, cement accretion, dismounted wheel, open sidewalk. Accession 18826254. Acquired November 16, 2025. 305 days on view. The drum's galvanised housing carries a dense spatter of dried cement across its upper curve, pale grey over pale grey, with rust following the seams and rivet lines beneath. The work rests on three points rather than four: the tow tongue laid against the base of the wooden pole, the frame settled onto the concrete, and a single hub stripped bare where its tire has come free and fallen flat alongside. Like the other works gathered here, it sits on the public side of the fence while the fence's contents remain on the other; unlike them, it has come apart into two pieces that remain within arm's reach of one another. The museum preserves it for that separation, which is the clearest record of weight the collection holds.
3. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 4 — Steel drum, towable frame, oxidising, dismounted wheel. Accession 18832633. Acquired November 19, 2025. 302 days on view. The drum's white paint is flecked and blistered across its upper curve, and the frame has pitched forward until the towing tongue comes to rest against the base of the utility pole, transferring the load from the axle to the timber. To the right, the wheel has come apart into its two components, rim and tire lying separately on the concrete, which gives the composition a lower register of scattered parts beneath the mass of the drum. Read alongside its siblings in the series, this is the work in which the fence has stopped functioning as a boundary: the equipment stands on the public side of the chain-link, arranged as if still in service. The museum preserves it for that reversal of inside and out.
4. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 5 — Steel drum, cast wheel, detached tire, concrete sidewalk. Accession 18834939. Acquired November 20, 2025. 301 days on view. The drum's galvanized skin has gone mottled and speckled where rain has run off it, brightest along the curved crown and dark at the seams, and the tow bar has dropped to lie flat on the concrete with its coupler dulled to orange. Directly to the right the wheel has come apart into its components, the white rim set flat on the pavement and the tire resting a short distance off, arranged as if disassembled deliberately. Where the other works in this series remain behind the chain-link, this one has crossed the line and settled onto the public surface. The museum preserves it as the series' clearest instance of a machine at rest on its own frame.
5. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 6 — Steel mixing drum, towable chassis, dismounted wheel, concrete residue. Accession 18851425. Acquired November 22, 2025. 299 days on view. The work is organised around a single failure of support: the near wheel lies flat on the concrete beside its own white rim, and the frame has settled onto that low corner so that the tow tongue reaches the base of the wooden pole and rests there. Dried concrete has spattered the drum and cowling in a fine grey stipple that reads, at this distance, as a mottled patina across the galvanized steel. The tarp and chain-link behind establish the boundary the piece has crossed, and the museum preserves it as the series' most fully reclined member, the only one in which the mechanism has surrendered its wheelbase to the sidewalk.
6. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 7 — Sheet steel, cement residue, detached wheel, sidewalk installation. Accession 18913356. Acquired November 26, 2025. 295 days on view. The drum carries a dense spatter of dried cement across its upper curve, pale grey over pale steel, so that the work reads almost monochrome against the corrugated fence behind it. Its rear wheel has parted from the hub and lies a short distance away, rim and tire separated, which shifts the mixer's weight forward onto the tow bar and the sidewalk. Read alongside its siblings in the series, this is the piece in which the boundary is least persuasive: the fence holds its yard, and the work stands outside it. The museum preserves the separated wheel as part of the composition rather than as a loss from it.
7. Inventory Beyond the Fence Line, No. 10 — Steel drum, mortar residue, dismounted wheel, concrete apron. Accession 19303991. Acquired January 2, 2026. 258 days on view. The work rests low on its remaining supports, hood and drum crusted with dried mortar that has weathered pale against the darker oxidation creeping up the tow arm. Its detached wheel lies a short distance off on the concrete, rim and tire parted, and the separation reads as the composition's organising gesture — the piece is arranged around what has left it. Like its siblings at this site, it sits outside the chain-link line rather than within it, on public concrete, in the posture of equipment set down between tasks. The museum preserves it as the series' clearest study in disassembly held still.

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