Unreliable Landscapes – Downtown, Auckland, 2017 (I-III)

Unreliable Landscapes – Downtown, Auckland, 2017 (I-III)

David Cowlard

Te Tuhi Studios
Parnell Station, 23 Cheshire St, Parnell

17 August - 17 November 2019

Part of Artweek Auckland 2019

David Cowlard, Unreliable Landscapes – Downtown, Auckland, 2017 (I-III), 2019 (install view). Commissioned by Te Tuhi, Auckland. Photo by Amy Weng

For the new Te Tuhi Billboards at Parnell Station, David Cowlard presents a series of images that explore sites flagged for infrastructural change as part of the ongoing development of the City Rail Link in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

The screen-grabbed and subsequently manipulated images suggest only the approximate presence of buildings and urban spaces, subverting our relationships to space and memory, and destabilizing our trust in the everyday environment which we inhabit. Thus, these "unreliable landscapes" allude to an alternative of what we see, where the shifting experience of our built environment comes into focus.