Benjamin bird
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EXPLORING ARCHITECTURE, MATERIALITY AND THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN IMAGE AND REALITY.
Benjamin Bird is a British contemporary artist based in Hertfordshire and London, whose multidisciplinary practice explores the intersections of photography, sculpture, architecture and materiality. Working across photographic installation, sculptural forms and text, he investigates how the built environment shapes our perception of history, politics, memory and contemporary life.Central to Bird's artistic practice is the relationship between images and physical structures. Through material experimentation and the transformation of photographic imagery, he questions how architecture is represented, imagined and experienced. His work considers the passage of time, the politics of urban space and the shifting boundaries between visual representation and tangible reality.
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Presented as part of RAW STATES の, a contemporary art exhibition curated by off-RCA exploring raw materials and their transformation through artistic practice, The Swimmer (2022) is a sculptural photographic installation examining the speculative nature of architectural imagery.
Originating from a computer-generated visualisation of a major London development, the work interrogates how images of imagined futures become instruments of aspiration, desire and commerce. Architectural representations often construct idealised visions of urban life while obscuring the complex social and political realities of redevelopment, housing and gentrification.
By removing the image from its original commercial context and translating it into a physical structure, Bird transforms an immaterial projection into a tangible sculptural object. Enlarged beyond its intended digital resolution and realised through C-type photographic printing and steel rebar, the work acquires weight, scale and architectural presence.
This transformation from image to matter lies at the heart of The Swimmer. The photograph becomes both representation and structure, exposing the unstable relationship between imagined environments and their material consequences.
Influenced by the philosophical writings of Gaston Bachelard, the Düsseldorf School of Photography and the contemplative possibilities of slowness, Bird's practice moves between the poetic and the political. His work invites viewers to question the authority of images, reconsider the spaces they inhabit and bring their own memories and interpretations to the encounter.
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Benjamin Bird — The Swimmer, 2022
C-type photographic print, steel rebar
136.6 × 242 × 60.5 cm
Edition 1Exhibited in RAW STATES の, curated by off-RCA, London, 2026.