Artists statement

Melbourne-based artist Stephen Haley explores the boundaries between actual and virtual spaces in an increasingly urbanised world.

While Dragon City (2019) and it's accompanying artwork Inter City (2018) resemble traditional photographs of sweeping cityscapes, these artworks are camera-less ‘virtual photographs’ constructed using 3D digital modelling software. Haley, whose career spans two decades and 120 international exhibitions, uses technology to mirror the very tools urban planners employ to shape our physical world.

By presenting simulated urban environments that feel familiar yet strangely impossible, Haley questions how digital technology alters human memory and perception. Both Inter City (2018) and Dragon City (2019) from his celebrated City Scape series offer a window into how our cities evolve, how we experience them, and perhaps most intriguingly, how they experience us.