Francine Hunter McGivern’s work embraces a range of ideas grounded in a Post-Conceptual practice that includes performance, video, text, multi-media installations, drawing, painting, and sculpture. 

Inspired by Warhol’s Factory, Hunter McGivern opened Jungle Red Studios in1977. Under the nom d’art, Jungle Red, she developed experimental work in theatre, performance, and cabaret and is acknowledged as an “infamous” member of the New York underground of the late 1970s and through the1980’s. Notorious for her sophisticated style, witty demeanor, and design skills, Jungle Red was highly sought after by high-profile players in art, music, fashion, and media. Her extensive contemporary art collection speaks to her role as muse to close friends, collaborators, and artists who also define the “Downtown” decade.

Living in Positano from 1989 to 1998, the artist was inspired by life amid the powerful volcanic energy fields on the Amalfi Coast, consequently developing a varied and unique vocabulary for framing spaces and materials that have evolved into her present practice. 

Diagnosed with epilepsy at age six, Hunter McGivern began counting interior gridded forms as a simple methodic exercise to perceive and map spatial delineation, thus locating her physical form in the spaces between. The out-of-body seizures guided her lifelong research into the Hermetic in art and philosophy. Metaphysics, geometry, physics, and mathematics are germinating ciphers that continue to determine and shape the artist’s practice. 

In 2011, Hunter McGivern rebuilt a 15000 square foot building in Linlithgo NY and founded CR10Arts; a five-year conceptual curatorial project investigating the role of the Kunsthalle in the 21st Century. Grounded in “practice | process| form | archive” and inspired by Gordon Matta Clark’s “Anarchitecture”, one hundred artists were invited to create site-specific installations and performances. The CR10Arts project and the Jungle Red Studios archives are at present housed in The Frank Institute @ CR10 where Hunter McGivern has her studio. 

Most recently McGivern’s work was featured at The Turley Gallery in Hudson, NY.

A review of her work by:

Francine Hunter McGivern: An Art of Everything by Carter Ratcliff

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