NETHERLANDS

Netherlands is a new series from Tom Leighton, focusing on the contraction of tactile texture created from hard, often brutal material, within the contemporary architecture of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.  These images include very recent additions to the landscape, impressive and imposing structures such as The Eye Museum, completed in 2012, designed by the Viennese firm Delugan Meissl Associated Architects and De Rotterdam, designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which was finalised in 2013. Contained within the tight framing of each artwork, Leighton juxtaposes pattern, material, the artificial and the natural. The images entice us to look again at these reconfigured architectural shapes and blocks of sky and water and recognise the textures, colours and relationships which undulate across our urban landscapes. The compositions remove the buildings from the context of their surroundings and distort the sense of scale, focusing instead on their relationship with light. They highlight how technological advances in contemporary architectural design and manufacture increasingly allow light to affect the form and contrast in the buildings - which subtly changes with the passing sun. Leighton’s calm majestic images belie the fact that the photos were taken on the hottest day in Amsterdam’s history. 2019 was a year that saw 33 hottest temperature records broken, the balance in the relationship between the ever warming planet and the materials and conceptual approach used in these structures has never been of greater importance, or more apparent in the final designs.  Leighton's photographs depict structures defiantly presenting themselves to the elements, bold statements of design that seem confident in their abilities to confront what is thrown at them, but their vicinity to the waters edge is another reminder of the environmental balance that needs to be found.