Being in the Land
Robyn Moore
    My goals as a visual artist arise from what has, for me, become a basic human need: to make contact with the beings and forces that surround me in the land. Such diverse entities dwell on timescales that range from the astonishingly brief to those considered more geological. Many of these entities are withdrawn: they are palpably felt, undeniably present and, frequently, withheld from view. I rely on my art practice to facilitate empathy for these entities and, if possible, to foster an imagining of others' worlds, lives, histories and experiences. I make work to confront the limits of my own knowledge and to imagine ways of knowing that might traverse these limits. 
    Being in the Land is a series of photographic artworks inspired by my desire to make contact with the land's features, forces and deep time entities all of which seem intangible and inaccessible. By making aspects of the land’s more latent phenomena visible and material I hope to understand more about its biological history and significance. The works in Being in the Land are made using two distinct photographic processes: pinhole photography and photopolymer gravure. I work with these processes because they are unpredictable, giving, and revelatory. Indeed, I feel they both allow me to access what cannot be seen with a more conventional sense of sight.
    The works in the gallery adjacent are from a related series called Embodied Knowledge. These works reflect my obsession with exploring how the creatures and objects of the biological world—many of whom I encounter whilst photographing in the landscape—seem to encode meaningful information in and with their bodies. For me, the artwork itself is a way to explore and make contact with what appears to be a visual biological language that seems, at times, only barely intelligible yet all the while absolutely innate among all living things.
Robyn Moore is a photographer and filmmaker originally from Virginia. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts (Photomedia) from Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia and a MFA in Photography and Experimental Film from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her research interests include biosemiotics, phenomenology, empathic imagining, and the ways in which visibly material photographic practices can encourage new ways of seeing other animals. Robyn has had her work exhibited widely, including at the South Australian Museum (Adelaide, SA, Australia); the National Archives of Australia; the Texas Photographic Society in Johnson City TX; the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel MS; the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham MA; the San Francisco International Film Festival; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Harvard University; and Washington Printmakers Gallery in Washington, D.C. She has also been the recipient of numerous artist's residencies, including a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center (VT) and those at Jentel Artist Residency Program in Sheridan, Wyoming and Signal Fire Outpost residency in Portland, Oregon. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Morehead State University in Morehead, KY.