London-based artist Ellie Davies creates lengthy paths through the forest as a form of installation art. Just like Hansel and Gretel left a trail of pebbles to find their way home through the trees, Davies guides her viewers along prominently placed trails of ferns and foliage in this project entitled Constructed Pathways. After creating an extremely conspicuous path, Davies photographs the scene as both a landscape and an artificially created object.
Davies created this project in order to investigate her own relationship with nature. She says, “If all natural spaces are utilized, shaped, managed, and farmed by man, can we ever access the natural world on its own terms?” The artist constructs her installations among very natural landscapes using materials such as paint, powder, wool, and paper. The flow and movement of each pathway reflects the natural flow of the land in an effort to reflect what Davies describes as “the ‘constructed' nature of landscapes, with particular reference to the long tradition of landscape painting and its role in the creation of meaning and myth making.” As humans affect the environment, nothing remains completely untouched and natural, and Davies works to explore the meaning of that transformation through her work.
