Head Off Landscape

20 Jun 2013 | Blog

The Head On Photo Festival is in its final showcase week, celebrating a vast range of photography across a vast range of exhibition venues. One exhibition of particular interest to those of us working within the landscape realm is that of the Head Off Landscape Prize, perhaps not so much due to the topic itself but more in the manner of which the collection is displayed to the public.

The Head Off Landscape Prize is a photographic assortment of large scale landscape, cityscape, seascape and urban scale images all unveiled within a small scale, award winning landscape in itself, the Paddington Reservoir Gardens, Oxford Street, Paddington.

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Strung to historic brick, cast iron and timber remnants, and other such heritage items of this sunken garden, hangs photographic artworks which “encompasses ‘large vista’ images of natural environment (land or sea), urban or industrial settings.” From vistas of Lake Mungo in South East Australia to a desert road through Palm Springs in the USA, the beauty of our planets’ natural landscape is undeniably captured through these works and enhanced to a considerable extent by the revitalised landscape setting in which they occupy.

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Wandering through this unique exhibition space, the visitor is encouraged to consider the city itself as an extension of a museum or art gallery – a recent global trend which sees an exciting shift from expectations of how an exhibition should be experienced.

Written by Laura Pyne