Artist Statement

Urban Fictions is an exhibition of photographic and video work examining the emergence of simulated urban developments in Eastern China. The work documents a series of new towns being constructed based on different European architectural models, presenting a complex social depiction of aspects of modern China, and its relationship with the West.

Its focus is a broad national narrative involving consumerism and rapid economic expansion together with a certain spectacle in the form of the image. Rowland’s work ‘documents’ its subjects, but is self-critical of what is involved in doing so, acknowledging a certain artifice and ambivalence in what might be termed a ‘documentary aesthetic’. Its subjects are in a sense already images, even before they have become photographs.

Through its images of modern China, Urban Fictions raises compelling questions about the complex, shifting and uncertain character of an increasingly international world.

Artist Bio

UK-based artist Richard Rowland’s photographic practice is increasingly concerned with areas of new urbanism and their relationship to the social, cultural and economic conditions of our time. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

For more information on Rich Rowland please see www.richardrowland.co.uk