Jeremy Drummond "65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living," May 5 to June 11, 2011 The New Gallery, Calgary

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"65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living"

Jeremy Drummond, "65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living," installation detail, 2007 - 2008.

JEREMY DRUMMOND

65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living May 5 to June 11, 2011 The New Gallery, Calgary

BY: Amy Fung

As a harsh yet sublime portrait of North American suburbia, 65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living is a collection of 65 aerial images depicting every Canadian province and US state.

As a Canadian artist currently living in Pennsylvania, Drummond has been exploring the suburbs through video and photographic works that manipulate what’s natural and what has been devised. Echoing the urban planning maps of residential construction in this series, each photo captures a single housing subdivision, digitally reconstructed. While they appear like most subdivisions at first glance, no roads lead either in or out. Each neighbourhood is wholly self-contained, as if an island of homogenous housing. As a critique of the notion of gated communities and suburban privacy, the photographs focus on the uniformity of each community. As an installation, the photographs are displayed to reflect their actual geographic and spatial relationship, suggesting a re-mapping of how enclosed most of North America truly is. As a multiple, the images are printed as an edition of standard postcards, further pushing the notion of residential planned communities as desirable locations.