University of North Carolina Greensboro: After the Landscape

Exhibition: After the Landscape

Opening at Library Project on Thursday, May 30th at 6 pm.

Participating artists: Melissa Averitt, Peter Brown, Alyssa Chase, James Claiborne, Kathryn Douglass, Caroline Lombardino, Gabrielle Mills, Theresa Newell, Brittany Souder, Louie Tangca, and Todd Turner. With Facilitators Leah Sobsey and Heather Mallory

As long as there has been art, artists have turned to nature for inspiration and observation. The direct representation of landscape is one of the most reliably accessible examples of this relationship. As human interactions with the natural environment have changed, however, so too must the artist’s conception of the landscape evolve.

The work in this show is the culmination of a 16-day residency at Cow House Studios in County Wexford, where undergraduate students from the University of North Carolina Greensboro gathered as part of a study abroad program. This residency challenged students to rethink the landscape genre and meditate deeply on humans’ relationship to, their impact on, and their place in the physical environment that we call nature.

Throughout their time at Cow House, students experimented with a variety of different photographic techniques, technologies, and methodologies in order to discern not only how process affects outcome but also how it changes the way an artist is able to interact with and within a chosen landscape. Students engaged with many tools aside from the camera to reshape their notion of nature and to create their own new language of landscape photography. As a result, the show includes work produced using both digital and analog processes as well as alternative processes (such as cyanotypes and lumen prints).

This residency was made possible by funding from the University of North Carolina Greensboro Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creativity Office; the International Programs Center Kohler Fund; the UNCG Global Engagement Course Development Award; the UNCG School of Art, the UNCG College of Visual and Performing Arts; and the Maggie and Gene Triplett Fund.

With special thanks to PhotoIreland Foundation, Cathy Fitzgerald the Generator Hostel, and Todd Turner.

Image from left to right Peter Brown, James Claiborne & Gabrielle Mills