Assembly
Sara Siestream
Anastasia Samoylova
Lisa Jarret
Jeremy Okai Davis
Patrick Hamilton
Adrienne Cruz
Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Brian Maguire
Karlo Andrei Ibarra
Nicola López
Judith Wyss
Vo Vo
Julian Gaines
Aug 24–Oct 7–8
As indicated by its title, Assembly brings together a diverse company of Portland-based and international artists across three venues located in Portland’s legendary Pearl District. These venues are the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Parallax Art Center and Stelo Arts. Long known as the city’s most prominent gallery district and home to a number of its more important arts institutions, the Pearl District has an extensive record of fomenting experimentation for Pacific Northwest artists, as well as playing host to select national and global artists.
A fundamental part of Converge 45’s project of putting artists and works of art-as-a-social-form into active conversation, this group exhibition explores, among other values, ideas of identity, representation, inclusion, citizenship, labor, landscape, cityscape, ecology, trade, regionalism and globalism, at a time when the very meanings of these terms are shifting. Because Converge 45 views its participating artists—to borrow a phrase from the Romantic poet Percy Bysse Shelley—as the unacknowledged legislators of the world, Assembly has designed this group show as a series of colloquies. Each features creators and their artworks dialoguing across geography and difference. When viewed from the vantage point of our age of intolerance, this exhibition presents a collaborative model as a good in itself.
ASSEMBLY is a group exhibition ranging across three venues in Portland’s Pearl District. Participating artists are listed below by venue:
Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) at the Dane Nelson and Ed Cauduro Collection Studies Lab and the Lemelson Innovation Studio: Adriene Cruz (b. 1953, Harlem, New York; lives and works in Portland, OR), Jeremy Okai Davis (b. 1979, Charlotte, NC; lives and works in Portland, OR), Patrick Hamilton (b. 1974, Louvain, Belgium; lives and works in Madrid, Spain), Karlo Andrei Ibarra (b. 1982, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives and works San Juan, Puerto Rico), Brian Maguire (b. 1951, Dublin; lives and works Dublin, Ireland and Paris, France).
Parallax Art Center: Lisa Jarrett (b. 1977, Morristown, NJ; lives and works Portland, OR), Narsiso Martinez (b. 1977, Oaxaca, Mexico; lives and works Los Angeles, CA), Julian Gaines (b. 1991, Chicago, IL; lives and works Portland, OR), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) (b. 1976, Umpqua River Valley, OR; lives and works Portland, OR), Vo Vo (b. Wellington, Aotearoa aka New Zealand; lives and works Portland, OR).
Stelo Arts: Jessica Jackson Hutchins (b. 1971, Chicago, IL; lives and works in Portland, OR), Nicola Lopez (b. 1975, Santa Fe, NM; lives and works New York, NY), Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984, Moscow, Russia; lives and works Miami, FL), Judith Wyss (b. 1938, lives and works Portland, OR).