Ithaka 3, 2008
Ithaka 58, 2008
Ithaka 31, 2008
Ithaka 34.2, 2008
Ithaka 37, 2008
Ithaka 42, 2008
Ithaka 14, 2008
Ithaka 3.2, 2008
Ithaka 61A, 2008
Ithaka 36, 2008
Ithaka 9, 2008
Ithaka 15.2, 2008
Ithaka 27, 2008
Ithaka 52, 2008
Ithaka 8, 2008
Ithaka 4, 2008
Ithaka 60, 2008
Ithaka 4.2, 2008
Ithaka 2, 2008
Ithaka 61B, 2008
Ithaka 15, 2008
Ithaka 10, 2008
Please Click Here To Read an Interview with the Artist in the New Yorker
Please Click Here To Read an Article on the Artist in Soho HOUSE Magazine
Biography
Alexandra Hedison is a Los Angeles-based artist and photographer who first showed her abstract landscape work at Rose Gallery in Santa Monica's Bergamot Station. In 2003, Hedison's solo exhibition Elements, an overview of her work from the previous 4 years, was exhibited at White Room Gallery in West Hollywood. In 2005 the gallery also exhibited her (Re)building series, which addressed the challenging themes of loss, transition, and recovery.
Ithaka is Hedison's latest body of work, which takes its title from the C.P. Cavafy poem of the same name. Shot in the temperate rainforest in North America, this series of large-format photographs first previewed for the press launch of Concrete + Glass (the art event which brought together over 25 artists to the galleries and art spaces in London's East End) in July 2008. The same year, Hedison exhibitedIthaka at Shoreditch Town Hall in London and Gallery 28 in New York as part of the New Yorker's 2008 Passport to the Arts.
She is currently working on a new series of images that examines the foundation and construction of Malibu beach houses as a metaphor for the role of memory in the architecture of the subconscious.
Hedison will be participating in an international group exhibition that will tour the Middle East in 2010.
Artist Satement
"My work is concerned primarily with the personal narrative and its universality of loss and recovery. I use the
physicality of global terrains to explore the equally layered tapestries of the human interior. Structuring my work
around journeys, I focus on topographic identities, using visual narratives of landscapes as metaphors for the
journey of life.
In ITHAKA, it is through the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Norhtwest that I illustrate the internal odyssey,
with its depths and challenges of transition and change. In my documentation, I explore both the core structures that framed the landscape, and also the seasonal growht with its own shorter cycles of life and death. In the images that form ITHAKA, the layers of the forest and its seemingly infinite background underscore the allegorical physicality of the journey from a recognizable place to one that is unfamiliar. The empty spaces become as pertinent as the subject, with calculated attenstion given to capturing the shifting balance between absence and presence, shadow and light.
In my pursuit of examinging the lifelines that offer continuity through loss and upheaval, I attempt with my visual narratives to take viewers beyond the mere immediacy of the tangible landscape to a deeper place of discovery. With ITHAKA, I aim to chart a journey that was inspired by C.P. Cavafy's poem of the same name, and which begins: "As you set out for Ithaka, pray that the road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery."
By probing the complexity of human journey through my work, and addressing the inevitability of both loss and discovery, I aim to examine the mutation fo our histories in the formation of our present, and to offer contemplations on the place of loss in the architecture of our lives."
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
State University of New York, Purchase
University of California, Los Angeles
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 Frank Pictures Gallery, Los Angeles
2008 Point of View Gallery, NYC
2008 Shoreditch Town Hall, London
2008 Concrete + Glass, London
2005 White Room Gallery, Los Angeles
2004 White Room Gallery, Los Angeles
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2002 Rose Gallery, Santa Monica
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hauser, Nao. New Yorker Magazine, September 2008& October 2008
Wyatt, Kieran. "Heart of Darkness." House Magazine. Autumn 2008
Eldridge, Jackie. "Grounded Visionary." Outlook Magazine. February 2007
Clark, Erin. "Rebuilding." Artworks Magazine. Fall 2006
Corcoran, Monica. "A Night Out With." New York Times. August 2004
"About Town." The Hollywood Reporter. July 2004
About the MOPLA
MOPLA's two-fold mission is to advance dynamic programming designed to engage and stimulate the photography community, as well as to present a comprehensive resource of exhibitions and events in April 2009. MOPLA is organized by the LUCIE FOUNDATION, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the celebration of photography.
www.monthofphotography.com
