MinerAlert
MinerAlert
Rubin Gallery
October 8th - December 12th, 2009
Snagged examined accumulation as a method of recording memory and experience. It was the latest in a series of large-scale site installations by Tom Leader Studio, a landscape architecture firm based in Berkeley, California, that creates sustainable landscapes and explores the human impact on the environment. Sarah Cowles, esteemed alumnus of Tom Leader Studio and Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University (OSU), visited El Paso with a team of OSU students during summer 2009 to conduct on-site research about the natural and constructed landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley. This group consulted with UTEP students and faculty in an exciting collaboration between these two universities, resulting in Snagged.
Tom Leader Studios has a strong track record of both landscape design projects and works for exhibition that question our relationship to natural resources such as coastlines and clean air. The Studios’ works were included in Groundswell, 2005, an exhibition of international landscape design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and in Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Studio also created an on-site installation Coastlines as part of the exhibition Revelatory Landscapes, 2001, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Leftovers at Archilab in Orleans, France, 2002. Both of these installations concerned detritus, memory, and land formation.
