From Sky to Ground: Fragmented Landscapes (2008-2009) is a series that deconstructs and combines images of many environments from around the world to create a newly abstracted landscape. Cut from images printed in National Geographic during the 1980s and early 1990s, the series explores how the magazine’s photographs of landscapes continue to replicate the notion of the picturesque.
Devoid of people or animals, the collages present landscape as a pristine and unoccupied canvas upon which an idealized view of nature could be imposed. However, due to the fragmentation and abstraction of these collage landscapes, this ideal picturesque becomes destabilised.
From Sky to Ground: Fragmented Landscapes also considers how the original landscapes photographed by National Geographic have likely transformed due to climate change, forestry, pollution, construction and human interaction.
The From Sky to Ground series was exhibited at Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture in Edmonton, Alberta in Sept. 2009 and at the Keyano Art Gallery in Fort McMurray, Alberta in Nov. 2010. http://www.latitude53.org/archive/2009/Hutchinson
