The Orlando Museum of Art presents Wendy Babcox: Landscape Interrupted an exhibition on view 12 01 2011 – 021 2 2012.
Wendy Babcox, Untitled Tent, Long, 2011, archival ink jet print, 19 ¾ x 15 ¾ in., Collection of the artist.
Photographs are deeply connected with our daily-lived experiences. They permeate our lives, make their way into our consciousness and record context for the times in which we live. Wendy Babcox looks to her surroundings to explore this complexity of photography and examines the human relationship to the natural world through visual reflections of the environment she inhabits. Landscape Interrupted embodies the bold and colorful landscape of Florida, while depicting the cultural economy of entertainment that defines the state’s identity.
The photographs in this exhibition come from an investigation of form and color in the landscape. These works identify the strange and exquisite forms that emerge from the human desire to shape and control one’s surroundings. Buildings tented for termites rise like bright and cheerful circus tents from the urban landscape. These arresting fleeting structures are created in a matter of hours and they disappear within a day or two. Each installation is unique to the bulk and configuration of the structure that lies below the bright tarpaulin. Babcox’s scenes of golf courses represent a more permanent intervention into the landscape. The undulating forms are carved into the earth, reconfiguring the ground beneath our feet. The architecture of the golf course demonstrates a visual coherence and structure asserted upon the “chaos” of the landscape. The culture of these perfect greens appears to reaffirm our capacity to shape the natural world for our own delight.
Babcox primarily works in photography and video and was born in 1963 in Windsor, United Kingdom. She received her BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder and her MFA from the University of Florida. She now teaches photography at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Babcox is also a founding member of the 6+ Collective. Her solo and collaborative projects have been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally in such venues as the Bronx Museum; the Kitchen and Exit Art in New York; the Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College in Chicago; the Transmodern Age Festival in Baltimore; the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids; Miami Beach Cinematheque in Miami; the International Center of Bethlehem; Al Hoash Gallery in Jerusalem; and in Russia, New Zealand, Mexico, Columbia and Peru.
Orlando Museum of Art
2416 North Mills Ave
Orlando, Florida
407 896 4231
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www.omart.org