ART SEEN
‘‘Works by Rachel Hirabayashi’’, Rachel Hirabayashi
(Cromwell Museum)
A WIRE horse sits on a red shelf. A toy mouse swings gently from the ceiling rafters, suspended inside a reflective glass bauble. Patchwork fish hang from a loop of twine, books lie open and waiting, and a paintsplattered apron is hooked on the back of an easel, as if its owner will shortly return to pick up her brush. Stepping inside Cromwell Museum is currently like opening a door into the evocative imagination of artist Rachel Hirabayashi — and travelling back in time with your own memories.
Hirabayashi surrounds herself with the objects she’s collected throughout her life, each one linked to a memory, and she explores that connection through her art. It’s an intensely personal exhibition, with the artist’s own chair and furniture adding to the strong sense of her presence throughout the space. However, her work doesn’t merely present finished images for the viewer to observe from a distance. It opens a door and invites you to fill any empty space with your own emotional connections.
Many of the works reference the flooding that formed Lake Dunstan, with paintings depicting objects floating underwater — houses, teapots, the ghostly outlines of human figures. Just as those objects fall into the abyss of the flooded land, our memories are not fixed and infallible. Our perception of the past changes with the passing of time and new experiences, but we turn everyday items into treasures, a repository for our memories until we’re ready to pull them out and examine them once more.