Matthew Moore
Matthew Moore
Matthew
Moore
b. 1976 STUDIO IN PHOENIX, AZ
Matthew Moore is a fourth-generation farmer and a conceptual artist. His work has addressed the encroachment of suburbia on his own family farm, and the resulting sense of loss as one kind of place supplants another.
In lifecycles, Moore records time-lapse images of the growth cycles of selected produce—lettuce, radishes, carrots. These video works, accompanied by meditative soundtracks, are installed in the produce departments of local stores, directly adjacent to the crops they depict. The beauty and rhythm of the imagery is mesmerizing, while the duration of the growth cycles (“Radish, 40 days to harvest”) fosters appreciation of the farmer’s labor.
Moore has also created the Digital Farm Collective, an expansive effort to facilitate the archiving of images of crop growth, and a curriculum to engage schoolchildren in growing and documenting their own gardens.
In lifecycles, Moore records time-lapse images of the growth cycles of selected produce—lettuce, radishes, carrots. These video works, accompanied by meditative soundtracks, are installed in the produce departments of local stores, directly adjacent to the crops they depict. The beauty and rhythm of the imagery is mesmerizing, while the duration of the growth cycles (“Radish, 40 days to harvest”) fosters appreciation of the farmer’s labor.
Moore has also created the Digital Farm Collective, an expansive effort to facilitate the archiving of images of crop growth, and a curriculum to engage schoolchildren in growing and documenting their own gardens.
I grow carrots, 200 acres a year. I figured out in the last seven years I’ve grown enough carrots to go around the world four-and-a-half times if you connect them end-toend. I came up with this idea to film everything I grew and create a new grocery store environment. For me, this is the theater of land use. I want to take artistic ideas out from the museum and into the greater world.
— Matthew Moore
