Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego-La Jolla

Skeet McAuley: The Garden of Golf was originally shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2001. Selections from the exhibition showcase six large-scale photographs, now in the Museum’s collection, of golf course landscapes in the San Diego region. Between the summer of 2000 and the spring of 2001, Los Angeles-based artist Skeet McAuley traveled throughout San Diego County visiting and photographing more than a dozen golf courses, from the most dramatic mountain and desert fairways to rocky greens by the sea.
 
Throughout his career, McAuley has used photography as a means to study the relationship between today’s consumer-driven culture and the natural environment. By photographing the courses in the early morning and at sunset, McAuley took advantage of the dramatic lighting and atmosphere to study these unique landscapes that are at once natural and man-made. The enormous, color-saturated images document how the courses are designed, watered, and cared for to satisfy the needs of the game of golf and create an idealized concept of nature.