ANNE ZAHALKA has just opened Lost Landscapes – a solo show at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.
In this exhibition, Zahalka turns her lens towards QVMAG’s historic dioramas for the latest iteration of her series Wild Life: a project in which she unearths habitat displays from around Australia and re-imagines them to reflect contemporary concerns about the environment.
The popularity of dioramas has faded with the advancement of technology in museum displays. Today they are mostly lost or destroyed. This exhibition brings together QVMAG’s historic dioramas, restored as they were originally displayed, alongside Zahalka’s radial interpretations.
In an era of climate change awareness, this exhibition calls us to notice the drastic changes in the Tasmanian environment and our role in it’s degradation or preservation. Using digital manipulation to interrupt the idealistic and static landscapes depicted in the dioramas, Zahalka offers both apocalyptic and utopian visions of what our future could be.
Lost Landscapes continues at QVMAG until October 2021.
