RACC Press Releases
October 6 , 2006
Memories Past, Memories Future
at the Portland Building
October 30-November 24, 2006
The Regional Arts & Culture Council presents the installation, Memories Past, Memories Future, by Portland artist Rhoda London in the Portland Building Installation Space, October 30-November 24, 2006. The Portland Building, located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue, is open to the public from 7am - 6pm, Monday through Friday.
Memories Past, Memories Future – the only vessel that can hold all the light is a broken heart is about how we carry our stories from place to place. The artist writes, “Given the circumstances that affect all of our lives, the one thing we do is to keep our stories and life-altering experiences close to our hearts and carry them with us into different relationships, even different locations.” Black satin hearts wrapped with twine will be suspended along the back wall of the space, each holding a wrapped stone. A wheelbarrow, serving as a metaphor for taking our stories and moving them around, holds more stones and hearts. As part of the installation, London will provide paper and writing tools for viewers to write and share their own stories. As Joan Didion has written, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
Background
Rhoda London’s work concerns the environment, immigration (displacement and adaptation), women and art history, gender issues and relationships, and currently, the complications of memory. She has curated several projects related to storytelling, including Telling Stories: Artists’ Books and Journals at Mills College, the Blue Book Chronicles: About War and Peace at the ProArts Gallery in Oakland, and Ways of Telling an exhibition of narrative works at The Art Store in Oakland. London received her MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and in 1999 was the recipient of a California Arts Council Visual Artist’s Fellowship. She serves on the Programming Committee for the Portland Art Center and was the coordinator for the St. Johns Window Project in Portland from 2003-2005. She has had solo exhibitions in Berkeley, San Francisco and New York and been included in numerous two-person and group exhibitions across the country.
Sponsored by the Regional Arts & Culture Council since 1994, the Installation Art Series at the Portland Building invites the general public to re-examine its expectations and definitions of art, encourage dialogue about the role of art in public spaces, and provide artists with alternative exhibition space for their work. Artists featured through 2006 include all the art that fits: City/County employee art exhibit, December 1-January 5, 2007; Carolina Aragon, January 15-February 9, 2007; Susan Gladstone, February 19-March 16, 2007.
Through vision, leadership and service the Regional Arts
& Culture Council works to integrate arts and culture in all aspects of
community life.
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Jeff Hawthorne
Director of Community Affairs
503.823.5258
jhawthorne@racc.org
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503.823.5426
mbauer@racc.org
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