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Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

Atmospherics & Impressions

Square abstract photograph of blue, violet and pale pink hydrangeas filling a garden. Intentional camera movement softens the blooms into overlapping clusters and faint spiralling traces, with blurred neighbouring houses above and a bright white area at the right edge.
Hydrangea

Atmospherics & Impressions brings together colour iPhone photographs made while walking, using intentional camera movement in changing available light. Most were made during repeated commutes through Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, where familiar routes offered continually shifting conditions. The work also extends beyond those routes into longer walks and weekend trips further afield.

The movement is often slight: a turn, tilt or twist of the phone, sometimes while walking. These small disruptions loosen the scene from fixed description. Forms stretch, overlap or soften, colour gathers into bands and veils, and recognisable places move towards abstraction without fully disappearing.

Made in camera rather than assembled afterwards, the photographs depend on timing, chance and response to what is encountered. Across the page, atmosphere becomes active in forming the image, shaped by movement, weather, light and the camera’s uncertain hold on a passing view.

  • Blurred square photograph of a dark mass of vegetation or ground cover. Scattered across its surface are numerous small, bright orange-red sparks or glowing points, with faint diagonal streaks of pale blue-grey light crossing the upper background.
    Wild Fires
  • Hazy blue seascape with pale cloud above and a faint dark horizon, featuring a blurred white sail-like shape near the lower right of centre and faint traces of other boats merging into sea and mist.
    White Sails

  • Square abstract photograph of a small flowering tree on vivid green grass. Intentional camera movement turns its dark foliage and cream blossom into a broad circular blur beneath a pale grey sky, with the shadowed trunk visible below.
    Carousel
  • A large brown tree trunk dominates the centre-right of the image, sharply anchoring a softly blurred scene of green ground, pale sky and faint suburban forms, with motion giving the surroundings a drifting, unstable feel.
    Resilience

  • Hazy blue-grey seascape with sunlight sparkling across the water and broad white glare softening the horizon. Rocky islands rise near the right, blurred and repeated across the shimmering sea.
    Prismatic Sea
  • Blurred dusk photograph with a large dark sky above lights on a low building, stretched into soft trails that resemble fairy lights, with a dark tree near the centre and dim open space to the right.
    Fairy Lights

  • Blurred square photograph of a dark palm tree silhouetted against a twilight sky. A warm golden-orange glow fills the lower right horizon beneath deepening blue clouds, with faint horizontal lines suggesting power cables crossing the frame above shadowed rooftops.
    Palm Afterglow
  • Square blue-grey abstract photograph of pine trunks and branches against a pale sky. Intentional camera movement creates overlapping vertical, curved and diagonal forms, with dark foliage swept into a dense central blur.
    Ghost Pine

  • Abstract dusk photograph of dark shoreline silhouetted against blue and orange sky, reflected in water with small ripple rings and circular marks across the surface.
    Water Marks

  • Blurred square photograph of a dark treeline silhouette against a pale twilight sky. A single tall conifer rises near the centre with fine branches catching the fading light, while a dense, soft-edged mass of foliage hangs heavily across the upper right.
    Douglas Fir
  • Blurred colour photograph of a slender birch with pale trunks and dense green foliage against a blue-grey sky. Bright grass fills the lower left, while deep shadow occupies the right side.
    Birch

  • A softly blurred, atmospheric image with a pale grey-violet sky, a dark horizontal middle band, and glowing white and golden looping light forms above and below, suggesting reflections across a misty waterside scene.
    Rose Moon
  • Square abstract photograph of blue, violet and pale pink hydrangeas filling a garden. Intentional camera movement softens the blooms into overlapping clusters and faint spiralling traces, with blurred neighbouring houses above and a bright white area at the right edge.
    Hydrangea

  • Blurred square photograph of a long, arching plant stem curving upward from a dark base against a pale twilight sky. Soft horizontal bands of warm gold and cool grey stretch across the background, with faint structural shapes dissolving into shadow at the lower right.
    Swan Neck
  • Square abstract colour photograph of a bright blue Ōtāhuhu Station sign repeated and partly obscured by camera movement. Pale blue-grey light fills the upper frame while dark forms gather below, crossed by pink, orange and white traces.
    Ōtāhuhu Station
  • Blurred square photograph of a solitary tree silhouette against a twilight sky. The tree's crown is dense and dark, with fine branches catching warm golden light from behind, while deep blue and purple tones sweep diagonally across the background above shadowed ground.
    Smoke Tree

  • Blurred square photograph of a modern station entrance. A dark glass facade features large white lettering reading "station", which repeats into multiple overlapping traces due to camera movement. Below, vertical streaks of pale blue, grey and warm yellow light suggest doors, pillars and an orange handrail or barrier line.
    Station

• ICM •