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moving through a

Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

ALT_AKLD

Dark altered photograph of an Auckland scene framed by trees, with a pale rectangular geometric form across the centre and a thin white looping line extending across the lower part of the image.
New Shores, Auckland

Alternate Auckland brings together altered photographs, digital montages and multiple exposures made around Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland while walking and commuting, beginning around 2013. The works draw on streets, gardens, waterfronts and other everyday places, where familiar views are disrupted through layered imagery, geometric forms, repeated shapes, reflections and graphic structures.

Across the series, the boundaries between the natural and the constructed become unstable. Vegetation appears to push back into urban space, water and reflections suggest changing shorelines, while buildings and infrastructure are caught within patterns that recall mapping, weaving and other forms of cultural construction. These woven and graphic overlays do more than decorate the scene; they suggest a way of inhabiting the ruins. They hint at a future relationship with the land—one where survivors adapt to a reshaped world by weaving new meanings into the fragments of the old.

The title also carries a personal dimension. Made while moving through a city that was still becoming home, the photographs can be read as attempts to map an unfamiliar place from within it. Auckland becomes both encountered landscape and imagined territory: a place being observed, altered and reassembled, with new shores appearing between memory, migration, nature and the built environment.

  • Altered photograph of grasses, paving, fencing and a metal structure, layered through overlapping rectangular sections with rotated views and white curved and diagonal graphic forms crossing the composition.
    Rambling Close, Shelly Beach
  • Altered photograph of a path through dense vegetation, layered with rectangular image sections, a central black horizontal band and looping white graphic lines.
    Dune Walker, Shelly Beach
  • Altered photograph of an industrial structure in Wynyard Quarter, layered into rectangular sections around a solid black central square, with white zigzag lines crossing the surrounding image.
    Bunker Down, Wynyard Quarter

  • Altered photograph of a spiky-leaved tree and industrial buildings beneath heavy clouds, with an inverted view of cylindrical industrial structures occupying the lower half of the image.
    False Dawns I, Otahuhu Floods
  • Altered photograph of industrial grain silos beneath heavy clouds, with an inverted reflection of the structures, trees and spiky-leaved plants extending into the lower half of the image.
    False Dawns II, Otahuhu Floods
  • Altered photograph of a leafy park with a large broad-leaved plant at centre, layered with overlapping views of trees, palms, paths and an elevated bridge.
    Forest Grove I, Shelly Beach
  • Altered photograph of Auckland’s Wynyard waterfront with the Sky Tower, shipping containers and marina structures, overlaid with a white diagonal grid, geometric forms and an inverted lower section.
    Wynyard Flood Weave II, Auckland

  • Altered photograph of a palm-like plant overlaid on railway tracks, with layered rectangular image sections, a dark central rectangle and pale geometric forms creating a fragmented composition.
    Palm Winds, Ōtāhuhu

  • Altered photograph of dense grasses and spiky-leaved plants, with layered central images revealing a metal structure and thin white lines looping across the vegetation.
    Forest Mask, Shelly Beach

  • Altered photograph of dense vegetation, layered with rectangular photographic fragments and broad grey geometric bands that cross and overlap to create a loose woven pattern.
    Basket Weave, Shelly Beach

  • Altered photograph of Wynyard Quarter beneath a cloudy early morning sky, with industrial buildings, masts, waterfront structures, a glowing letter N and the faint Sky Tower layered through the scene.
    False Dawns I, Wynyard Quarter

  • Altered photograph of Auckland’s Wynyard waterfront with the Sky Tower, marina structures and an inverted lower section, overlaid with a fine grid, translucent geometric forms and a glowing red letter O.
    Wynyard Flood Weave I, Auckland
  • Altered photograph of the Wynyard waterfront and Auckland skyline in the early morning, with the city and marina structures inverted into the lower half against a pale sky.
    False Dawns, Wynyard Floods

  • Altered colour photograph of a marina and Auckland skyline beneath dark clouds, with layered boats and buildings surrounding a central tree pierced by a bright horizontal flare.
    Island
  • Altered multiple-exposure colour photograph of an urban roadside with dark clouds, dry vegetation and a bright burst of light spreading through a central tree.
    Apocalypse

  • Altered photograph of a large branching tree and dense vegetation overlaid with motorway traffic, with vehicles visible through translucent layers of forest and foliage.
    Forest Grove II, Shelly Beach

  • Altered photograph of a backlit panelled barrier surrounded by dark vegetation, with overlapping rectangular sections and broad white angular lines creating a layered geometric composition.
    Portal Weave, Shelly Beach

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