Into the Park

In reaction to the wealth of images from television, cinema and print, we have become accustomed to learning about places from their representations, rather than real experience. Due to the World Wide Web, we now understand the world in the guise of hypertext, multitasking and virtual space. These methods of seeing have shaped a culture which is suffers from spiritual de-centeredness, a lack of gravity and a proclivity for nostalgia. Older modes of representation, which rely on the “privileged view” or “omniscient eye”, have given way to the shifting perspectives of the wandering man.

In this body of work, devices such as the panorama, multi point perspective and time space compression serve to evoke the contemporary experience of the "great outdoors". The images here include, re-engineered trees presented as a wall-papered mural, an inspirational poster of an impossible circular rainbow, a baroque style "oil painting" of engine oil on pavement, a mock scroll of silhouetted tree roots and a cloth backdrop of a mountain range generated from piles of gravel. 

As a lifelong urbanite, I, like many of us experience nature through parks, be it the theme park, the national park or parking lot. Redecorating and recomposing are the techniques I employ to show how nature has become an interior event. The contemporary wild kingdom resides in our infinite potential for altering and representing our environment.