Artists

Bill Mulholland

Background
Practising Architectural Designer and Photographer, Born 1981 Timaru, New Zealand, currently living in
Christchurch.
Education – attended first year of Art School at Otago Polytech 1999, National Certificate in Carpentry 2006,
National Diploma in Architecture 2016.

Photography as a medium
I started taking photos in the early 1990’s when black and white film and silver gelatin print processes were
taught in school, I began to explore the use of photography to create black and white prints alongside painting
and drawing to express ideas, which I continued into my time at Art School. Through this process I have
developed a photographic language that focuses on the use of tonal contrast to create a graphic representation
of the subject matter, and to produce a more pared back structural and textural interpretation of light and shade
on a surface, without the emotive intervention of colour.
I’ve come back to photography after establishing a career in construction and architecture, and through my
experience feel compelled to document the constantly changing natural and built environment. Within my
architectural practice I’m required to refine projects throughout the different stages of the design process which
has informed the compositional elements and framing of the views within my photographic work.
Through architecture I get the opportunity to assess and research a potential building site with a view to the
history of the area and its current context, I’m interested in the marks made by human intervention, and the
tension between old and new.
When used as an artistic medium, photography sits somewhere between poetry and film making, it can be
representational or abstract and is always open to interpretation, which allows me to portray something ordinary
in a different light.