ART > Wilderness & Other Utopias

Images of protected sites within Haida Gwaii, of a secret swimming hole within Banff National Park and photographs of snow covered forest illustrate my ongoing fascination with wilderness and a desire to create proof of its existence. But equally these photographs hover between reality and fiction representing imagined landscapes and invented states of being.

Presented together these images operate somewhere outside of the borders of the pictured territories creating only glimpses of a remote paradise. Visiting some of the most isolated landscapes in Canada, this work challenges the definitions surrounding wilderness and its placement within modernity. It examines our collective view of northern landscape and explores distant territories as places for refuse, inspiration and safe haven.

tara nicholson, haida gwaii, dome house
Dome House, Haida Gwaii
Tara Nicholson
C-Print
2010