De Williams
Forgotten Life
Edition 1/3
16 x 20 inch
Printed on Hahnemühle Fine Art
$145 AUD
Includes GST & postage within Australia
Bio
De Williams is a contemporary photographic artist based in Perth, Australia. With a practice that bridges fine art photography and mixed-media approaches, Williams investigates the narratives embedded within overlooked and forgotten spaces. Their work frequently explores themes of impermanence, memory, and transformation through a distinctive visual language informed by painterly technique and material embellishment.
De Williams has exhibited both internationally, including a notable presentation at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China (2025), where they focused on Perth’s broken and unattractive buildings. This body of work was influenced by the philosophy of kintsugi, using embellishment to highlight beauty within urban decay. More recently, Williams has exhibited at the Holmes à Court Galleries' 'Art for Aid' exhibition, further establishing their presence in contemporary Australian art circles.
Williams combines conceptual rigor with an intuitive engagement with texture, light, and architectural form. Their photographic approach transforms derelict and unused spaces into contemplative, poetic scenes that transcend mere documentation. Williams’ art invites viewers to reconsider the overlooked, finding resonance and beauty where others might see neglect.
In addition to their fine art practice, Williams has a background in visual storytelling and creative production, bringing a refined aesthetic sensibility to every work. Their ongoing investigation of space, surface, and the passage of time positions them as a distinctive voice within contemporary photography, contributing meaningfully to conversations around urban environments and the hidden narratives they contain.
Statement
The series presents a quietly immersive journey through the overlooked and unguarded interiors and exteriors of Pingyao’s abandoned architectural sites. Williams wanders beyond the pristine façades and curated streetscapes, deliberately seeking spaces where time appears suspended—shops, homes, and communal places left to quietly dissolve into history. Doors marked “do not enter” in Chinese invite transgression, opening onto interiors filled with relics and artifacts hinting at lives once lived: dusty books abandoned on tables, threadbare curtains filtering declining light, chairs left unused but still bearing the weight of past presence.
Rendered in muted color tones that echo the weathered surfaces themselves, the photographs evoke a painterly sensibility—layering subtle tonalities and textures that soften hard edges and heighten atmosphere. Nature emerges as a quiet protagonist amid the decay, creeping through broken roofs and cracked walls, weaving greenery into forgotten human spaces. This persistent incursion of life amidst decline gestures both to endurance and loss, holding space for regeneration even as human abandonment stitches a narrative of impermanence.
Williams’ process embodies an urgent responsiveness—often working with instinct prompted by an unspoken tension between trespass and discovery. This immediacy generates compositions resonant with accidental poetry, where shadow and light layer meaning within the frame like sediment. The imagery aligns with photographic traditions that find beauty in liminality and transience, quietly mediating between presence and disappearance, memory and erasure. These works invite viewers to witness not only the fragility of the built environment but also the luminous possibility inherent in forgotten places, where histories linger as fragile palimpsests awaiting new narratives.
