Images of Enjoyment and Spectacle

(Initiated: 2015)

These digital prints deal with the theatrical composition of London’s real estate imagery in the construction explosion of the early 2010s.

The images rework architectural advertising imagery, comprised of stock photography and digitally rendered architecture, used to sell new urban public spaces and residential developments in London. I removed the computer rendered architectural elements of the images leaving the photographic components in their original choreography. The architectural elements have been replaced with a computer generated colour gradient, that draws on the original colours of the image.

The images were installed at my first solo exhibition ‘Virtual Control: Security and the Urban Imagination’ at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2015. They were installed alongside coloured wall papers emblazoned with original marketing slogans for such environments.

The show also included two animated videos ‘Environments of Natural Charm and Reflection’ and ‘Character Areas’, which furthered the show’s distortion of visual and photographic material from these spaces using sound and motion graphics.

The project and exhibition was featured in a number of articles and books by publications such as Fast Company Design, Architecture Today, It’s Nice That, and the UCL Urban Laboratory (see below for details).