About

As a student of both Fine Art and Design, I am interested in the intersection between these two disciplines. In my art practice, I use sound and photography to explore playfulness in everyday urban spaces, in order to alter perceptions of them as purely functional designed objects. My practice attempts to subvert urban design norms by questioning and suggesting alternative perspectives on mundane urban objects. In doing so, my work creates a world free of conventions, norms, and assumptions; a speculative world wherein we are free to interact with objects and spaces beyond their utilitarian ‘designed’ purposes. By making the ‘uninteresting’ into art, I open up a much more playful and imaginative perspective on our everyday environments; objects and spaces become animated with histories and personalities of their own, much beyond their human-centred designed use.

My artistic process of recording the mundane opens up interactions and conversations between objects in the street that go overlooked, and encourages us to look at our environment in terms of its artistic and imaginary potential, and beyond the human-scale. I am really interested in behaviour on the street and the act of noticing, and my method and process of my practice reflects this. The behaviour of people on the street changes when they see me out photographing or recording sound- they stop or lean in or slow down to try and see what has caught my interest. They begin to notice. My process encourages people to break out of the human, utililitarian, almost unconsciously automatic way we are conditioned to move through spaces, and consider art as part of their everyday.

Please do get in touch for commissions or to discuss my work further!

rkwphotographs@gmail.com