David Cowlard’s interdisciplinary practice explores new approaches to architectural and spatial representation and includes work across a number of media: photography, moving image, urban field recording and sound design. He has a particular interest in exploring how spatial imaginaries can inform a wider critical engagement with architecture and the built environment.

 

David completed a Masters by Research at Kingston University (2009) in the UK and is Programme Leader for Photography and the Media Arts (Photo Media) at Whitecliffe, Auckland.

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David's series Unreliable Landscapes was commissioned for the Te Tuhi Contemporary Billboards project in 2019. David presented a series of images that digitally explored sites that were flagged for infrastructural change as part of the development of the City Rail Link in Auckland, New Zealand. The screen-grabbed and subsequently manipulated images suggest only the approximate presence of buildings and urban spaces, embodying the temporal and layered complexities that are fundamental to our built environment.

 

With these images, the artist attempts to invert the logic of the built environment by manipulating spaces that are fundamental to our everyday experience. In turn subverting our relationships to space and memory, while destabilizing our trust in the urban spaces we inhabit.

 

Eyecontact Review of the Billboards:

https://eyecontactmagazine.com/2019/07/cowlards-billboards

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