Reconstructed Landscapes" by Emilio Cresciani 2022"

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New works by emerging artist Emilio Cresciani exploring deforestation will be on show at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown from 14 April to 24 April 2022.

In 2020 Australia was burning. Native forests destroyed. Increased calls for back-burning and land clearing. Cresciani started this project before these deadly fires, concerned about our natural bush being decimated and continuing his interest in altered landscapes. Deforestation was already a huge public issue.

He took an analogue camera into NSW's national parks to document the forests, eco-systems essential to our lives. Capturing patterns of tree branches, bark and leaves, light and shade.

He then sliced the positive film, like wood-chips. The billions of trees cut down annually are represented by these photo-chips, a symbol of what we are doing to our natural environment.

Cropping, an act of vandalism. Bold cuts, trauma. Sliced so that regeneration is impossible.

Highlighting the gap between the myth of the Australian bush and the real cost of our modern lifestyles.

Australia, a deforestation hotspot on the global list of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), has cleared nearly half of its forest cover in the last 200 years, resulting in habitat loss, extinction of native flora and fauna, causing salinity and 14% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

Sliced and cut, sawn and hacked, these images upset the perception of trees as beautiful, functional, replaceable. They are out of place, not as they should be.