Romancing the Anthropocene curated by Ivan Jurakic and Crystal Mowry
Photo: Colin Davison
Suitable for all ages
Originally commissioned by Tyneside Cinema, UK
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Planetside Software, NewTek
Represented by Birch Libralato, Toronto
Mariner 9, 2012
Kelly Richardson - Whitley Bay, UK
Video Installation
Kelly Richardson’s Mariner 9 is a life-size, 12-metre-long panoramic view of a Martian landscape set hundreds of years in the future, littered with the rusting remains of various missions to the planet. Despite its suggested state of abandonment, several spacecraft continue to partially function and do their intended jobs, seeking signs of life, transmitting the data back to no one.
Mariner 9 was created using scenery-generation software employed by the film and gaming industries in combination with technical data from NASA's missions to Mars to produce a faithful artist's rendering of a Martian terrain, populated by debris from centuries of exploration featuring real and imagined spacecraft in the centre of a dust storm.
Richardson draws on science-fiction cinema, literature and the history of landscape painting. Her digital videos interweave fine art, animation, real footage of natural wildernesses and CGI, to create highly sophisticated and immersive works realised over many months and sometimes years. She has shown in the Beijing, Gwangju and Busan biennales, TIFF, Sundance Film Festival and has exhibited in major museums including the Hirshhorn Museum, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Art Gallery of Ontario.
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34
Commerce Court, 25 King Street West (East of Bay Street.)
This project is outdoors.