This publication coincides with the exhibition Thaddeus Holownia: Anatomy of a Pipeline held at the Owens Art Gallery from 10 November 2003 to 11 January 2004.

Thaddeus Holownia’s work is, on one level, a document, a photographic record of the laying of the 568 kilometer long Sable Gas Pipeline from the coast of Nova Scotia to the New Brunswick/Maine border in 1999-2000. It is also the exploration of human involvement with nature, a subject which has preoccupied the artist throughout his long career. And it is the photographic representation of a drawn line across the landscape, simultaneously simple and conceptually complex.

Essay by Robert Enright