As the Crow Flies
Ron Benner
West side of Museum London on the corner of Dundas St. and Harris Park Gate
As the Crow Flies is a living eco-based public art installation by internationally recognized Canadian artist Ron Benner. Benner’s photographic garden installations are in several collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Museum London.
Large scale photographs, embedded in a built pond, illustrate Benner’s travels to locations where land meets water along the longitudinal meridian of London due South, including Port Stanley, Florida, Cuba, Panama, and Peru. Bridging the environment, politics and the economy, the images act as a compass that visually connect each location based on geographical flows of resources such as food and petroleum.
Since the mid-70s Benner has mixed photography with organic materials like resins, plants, flowers, seeds, and crops. Generally speaking this artistic technique aims to disrupt or alter common assumptions. Disruptions or alterations, in this regard, can generate new or unknown realizations about nature based and socialized relationships. Installed in 2005, the photographic elements were integrated with a living pond-ecosphere, complete with local and nonlocal plants, flowers, insects, and animals. Such a fusion raises many open-ended questions for the viewer.
Image sourced from the Embassy Cultural House website, www.embassyculturalhouse.ca