'RAW' is a series of photographic images taken around the Auckland CBD during September 2001.
While the 'RAW' project focussed on the digital post production of images taken around the Auckland CBD, the images of tower blocks for corporations, government and educational institutes as well as car parks, brick walls at SCAPA, stairwells on oil storage tanks, air vents on Americas Cup boatsheds, the key factor was to capture artful photographic images of the man made environment that we saw everyday when we went about our daily lives in the CBD. The key to the image was art, did we like what we saw through the lens? Did we engage with it in a way that provoked thought about the visual environment of our city? We could change the environment digitally to represent a urban city which by the nature of the communities in it was collaborative and highlight the visual environment we never saw. Most buildings in the CBD could not be described as anything other than functional; they are not award winning architectural monuments to civilisation in the way of historic conventions. In order to connect the viewer to their environment in a unique way the images were kept to close ups or mid shots of building facades, windows, segments of buildings that meant the photograph could be used as a solo representative still photograph which was structured and formed around the visual detail that we don't have time to seek out in our busy lives. We let the audience stop and look.
The aim was to create art from the everyday, by using a series of digital filters to distort, change and manipulate the photographic image to encourage an awe and questioning by the viewer. We invite the audience to see that which it has not seen before. The film is simple, unprofound but engaging. The images are fractured, distorted, beautiful, idle, challenging of expected structural constraints. Buildings don't curve, roll, change colour, bend - or do they? Can we be certain of the image or is it tricking us? Real or fictional time lapses of fantasy, is this where you really live and work? The temporary nature of each photographic image (6 seconds) asks the audience to consume quickly before it changes again which is a strong metaphor for the nature of life in the modern city we live in.” Exhibition notes.