Alex Hartley: The world is still big – in pictures

Alex Hartley in his "eco-dome" at the Victoria Miro gallery in London: ‘a lunar module as designed by Harold Steptoe.’ The pod is based on one of the ones made famous by the hippies of Drop City, Colorado, in the 60s Photograph: Suki Dhanda

Alex Hartley inside the dome, his temporary home Photograph: Suki Dhanda

I don't know where I am, 2011. Part of Hartley's exhibition is a series of large-scale photographs, mostly of the Arctic and South America. 'Except they are not only photographs. Examine them closely and you will see that Hartley has built, or rather stuck, scaled architectural models on to, and sometimes into, their surfaces.'
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery

I'm tired of travelling, 2011. Here 'a rudimentary tent has been cast on to a backdrop of ancient woodland and mossy stones. What is interesting about these images is that even the more benign landscapes – one photograph was taken in the sunshine of Joshua Tree, California, another in Sardinia – come to seem menacing once Hartley has added his constructions.'
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery

Imagine there is a God, 2011. 'I’m not a very good photographer, says Hartley. 'I have to do something else, make some kind of intervention. But I live with the photograph, which is a static thing, day after day at first. That’s when I build a past into it, create a narrative for it, and that’s what excites me. But just making a nice new house wouldn’t really take me anywhere and so the original scene seems to deteriorate almost in front of me. I can’t help it.'
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery

Waiting for Daylight to End (Kaczynski's Cabin), 2011. Hartley has built a facsimile of the Unabomber’s cabin in a woodland clearing in this work
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery

The future is certain, 2011
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery

These days can't last forever, 2011
Photograph: © Alex Hartley/Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery