Between Mountain and Water: When photography becomes sculpture, and AI becomes creative partner
I’m preparing new works for Shanghai Westbund Art Fair in November, emerging from my transformative residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel earlier this year. Working in the cultural heart of where *shanshui* philosophy originated allowed me to deepen my practice in profound ways.
My art unfolds through three interconnected stages that I believe create entirely new forms of artistic expression:
Stage 1: Onsite Creation
- I photograph entirely at the capture site through meditative dialogue with landscape. These “Origin Images” capture not just visual information but the energetic essence of place, deeply influenced by traditional Chinese *shanshui* (mountain-water) philosophy.
Stage 2: AI Collaboration- AI becomes my creative partner in expanding these Origin Images, creating “digital sediments”—layered interpretations that extend the original landscape encounter into realms of collective memory and computational imagination.
Stage 3: Sculptural Reconnection -
Back in my Melbourne studio, I transform these digital conversations into physical objects. For my “To Be Held by the Garden” series, I UV-print photographs onto clear acrylic, then use controlled heat to hand-shape the material following the image’s natural contours. The garden becomes both subject and collaborator, its organic forms suggesting how the rigid acrylic should bend and curve.
The result? Photography that literally reaches into space—dimensional, light-responsive sculptures that can be walked around, that cast their own shadows and hold light in unexpected ways. This represents what I believe is the first true merger of photography and sculpture into unified practice.
As I prepare for Shanghai, I’m particularly excited to present this work within the rich cultural context where the philosophical foundations of my practice first took root. In a world of increasing environmental disconnection, my work proposes that technology—approached with meditative intention—can become a bridge back to deeper ecological awareness.
At 55, after decades as artist, academic, and curator at RMIT University, I feel I’m finally working at the true intersection of all my influences: from Daoist principles to digital materiality, from traditional landscape philosophy to cutting-edge AI collaboration.
The pieces heading to Shanghai carry within them the memory of specific landscape encounters, the creative intelligence of algorithmic partnership, and the physical presence of sculpted form—a three-stage dialogue between human, nature, and technology.
Here is a short BTS video , more soon.
Shanghai Westbund Art Fair | November 2025
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