The video work Orion Tide opens on a desert landscape under a magnificent starry sky, bathed in a mauve-tinted atmosphere. Filmed in a wide shot, the fixed image transports us into an inhospitable and uninhabited world that seems extraterrestrial. In this landscape, unidentified luminous phenomena, resembling explosions, rise toward the sky, making a dull noise and trailing thick grey smoke. The mysterious origin of these detonations reinforces the enigmatic nature of the site. Various scenarios can be envisaged: is it a near future, the distant past, or fiction? Do the lights emanate from spaceships taking off, explosions, or fireworks? With her images, Richardson defies visitors’ capacity to determine true from false. Although she refers to the constellation of Orion in the title, at no time does she indicate the origin of the place, preferring to play with the ambivalence of the scene. Thus, an ambience both calm and disquieting is created, punctuated by the vertical movement of the luminous objects.
The uniqueness of Richardson’s videos resides in the multitude of sources that she uses. Inspired by both science fiction and eighteenth-century romantic landscapes, she carefully edits a mixture of images of existing terrestrial landscapes, documentary excerpts, and digital effects. The videos created take viewers to images of uncertain and ambiguous origin: they emanate a sense of familiarity, but they are also both disquieting and enthralling.
Richardson is a video artist and photographer internationally known in the area of digital arts for her hyperrealist landscapes. She is particularly interested in the mechanisms that lead to the production of complex and ambiguous images. In addition to having had international exhibitions, her video installations were presented at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012, and at the Sundance Festival in 2009 and 2011. For her contribution to the visual arts, she received a National Arts Award in 2009.
Curator: Émilie Ruiz