Over the past decade, Ansley West Rivers has traversed the country photographing the rapidly transforming landscape with her large format camera. Ansley West Rivers: Holding Time brings together three distinct bodies of photographic work to show the disquieting intersection of landscape and humanity. West Rivers’ longstanding project Seven Rivers looks at seven important American watersheds...
Over the past decade, Ansley West Rivers has traversed the country photographing the rapidly transforming landscape with her large format camera. Ansley West Rivers: Holding Time brings together three distinct bodies of photographic work to show the disquieting intersection of landscape and humanity. West Rivers’ longstanding project Seven Rivers looks at seven important American watersheds from source to sea through meticulously constructed compositions. More recently, West Rivers has turned her attention to bodies of water near her home in Idaho as she observes the steady and sometimes heartbreaking change to essential fresh water sources. Seven Rivers is complemented by Tree Portraits, a new body of work motivated by the sudden annihilation of Aspen trees on a neighboring property and the often patchwork and fragmented human attempts to reconstruct man-made losses. The need for preservation is brought to Georgia’s doorstep through the inclusion of a large-scale map depicting the waterways of Athens and created through unique applications of the cyanotype and palladium printing techniques. Holding Time presents the beauty and wildness of the lands we inhabit in hopes of evoking conversation around the very sources of life itself.
About the Artist
Ansley West Rivers (American, b. 1983) holds a BFA from the University of Georgia and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. She currently lives and works in Victor, Idaho. West Rivers’ work is featured in many public and private collections including Telfair Museums, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, LaGrange Art Museum, and The Mayo Collection, among others. Additionally, West Rivers’ work has been shown at EUQINOM Gallery (San Francisco, CA), the Illges Gallery at Columbus State University (Columbus, GA), Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center (Savannah, GA), Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA), Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (San Francisco, CA), Sous Les Etoiles Gallery (New York, NY), Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver BC), The Brower Center (Berkley, CA), Kala Art Institute (Berkley, CA), Carmel Visual Arts (Carmel, CA), Hathaway Gallery (Atlanta, GA), United Photo Industries (DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA), and The Wiregrass Museum (Dothan, AL).
This exhibition is organized by the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art and guest curated by Erin Dunn, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA.
