Kelly Richardson - Forest Park - Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Perpetual Anticipation:Crystal Mowry in conversation with Kelly RichardsonKelly Richardson’s work has consistently offered viewers a beautified view of pending doom —a sense of awe and tranquil disaster via digitally manipulated images of unpopulated landscapes. Herrecent video works, in particular Forest Park and Exiles of the Shattered Star, offer perpetual loops ofsophisticated hybrid landscapes. Richardson proposes a sublime mix of both fantasy and reality in imagesthat are as much about the present as they are the future. The following conversation with Kelly tookplace via email in December of 2007.CM: I wanted to start by asking you about your Supernatural Series (2001 - present)—a body of photographsdepicting landscapes from horror movies. In looking at them in relation to the video works of thelast five years, there seems to be a shared sense of artificial stillness. You’ve described the SupernaturalSeries in the past as depicting moments of serenity before or after a bloodbath—which to me soundslike a romantic version of the apocalypse penned by the English poet of your choice. This sense of stillnessthat you manage to create softens the blow of pending doom. Let me in on what attracts you tosuch images?KR: Throughout all of my work, I’ve been interested in simultaneity as a way of summating conflictingfeelings associated with the everyday. The Supernatural Series seemed to nail this in ways that previous20