Alex Hartley

Working primarily with photography

often incorporating it into sculpture and installation Hartley's work addresses complicated and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward the built and natural environments. Encounters with buildings are grounded by conventions and expectations but Hartley shows us new ways of physically experiencing and thinking about our constructed surroundings – through surface and line,scale and materials,locations and contexts. His practice is wide ranging,comprising wall-based sculptural photographic compositions,room-sized architectural installations and, more recently,unique photographic works with sculptural elements inserted as low-relief into the surfaces of large-scale colour prints. Uniting these works is an investigation of modern architecture and the ways in which it is conceived and presented. Often destabilising ideas of 'iconic' architecture, Hartley's practice allows room for multiple perceptions of and uses for architecture.