Tessa Paton
Interplace
Interplace focuses on natural places and how I exist within them. Being raised on a dairy farm in Northland, I have always been drawn to the anthropocentric ways natural places have been used, thought about and framed over time. The New Zealand pastoral landscape has been physically shaped by farming, and the wild untamed New Zealand landscape has been culturally constructed as a pure, restorative place for humans. In one sense, landscapes are places seen through a Western lens, prominently valuing place for its picturesque qualities.
Capturing familiar places as unfamiliar is a way to make myself conscious of some of the value that lies under the visual surface layer of place. The playful combinations of images that connect in some places and destroy logic in others encourage the audience to make their own associations between these representations and envisage places differently.
