Christopher Lowther
 
 

“Cowboy Cruising” was a multi-media and multi-projector piece which exploited the way men look at each other in classic Western films—where the gaze takes on clear homoerotic and homosocial connotations.

Joan Hawkins, author of "Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avante-Garde"

 
"Cowboy Cruising" 2005-06
"Out of the Myth" Video Installation  
The “Out of the Myth” series is comprised of four pieces that explore censorship in film and space. The pieces are united as an examination of cinematic space, and a desire to make Queer space in cinema through recontextualization, extension and other artistic strategies.
   
   
Cowboy Cruising 2005-06
3 Channel Video Installation
 
Rope Reconstructed 2007
3 Channel Video Installation & 1 inch Scale Diorma
 
Representations of sexual preference or orientation are complex processes in the cinema. From the classic scene in the Maltese...more This inability to speak is not evident in Lowther’s next project, the conceptually and architecturally adventurous Rope Reconstructed. The...more
   
A Queer Shadow 2007
Single Channel Interactive Video Installation
 
Rebel Love: A Woman Scorned 2006-07
2 Channel Video Installation
 
Questions shift from interior, domestic space to exterior, sexualized space, inform A Queer Shadow, Lowther’s single projection...more
Turn finally to Rebel Love: A Woman Scorned, in which Lowther deconstructs Nicholas Ray’s classic film Rebel Without a Cause. Widely...more
   
   
Artist's Statement  

Consideration of several aspects of space — cinematic, cultural and sexual — are directions that I have taken with my work in various digital art mediums. In some instances the intersection of these directions reveals faults and cracks, fissures that need to be exposed and re-evaluated. The slippage that occurs along these faults suggests new ways of looking at space and the ways in which we experience and negotiate space. 

   
   
Other Works  
   
"Somnambulist" 2005  
"Living Room" 2005  
A single channel video based on personal dream metaphors and symbolism. A single channel interactive Flash installation that explores the relationship between entertainment and surveillance.
   
   
Email  
digital@uab.edu  
   
   
Biography  

Christopher Lowther is Assistant Professor of Time-Based Media at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He teaches Video, animation, interactive design, and 3D modeling/animation. Lowther is the recipient of the prestigious College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts) in recognition of his innovative use of space and video projection to reference stereotypes of masculinity in Hollywood film. Lowther's videos and installations have exhibited both nationally and internationally.

News
I have been given a second faculty appointment in the School of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering starting May 1, 2010.

Dr. Bharat Soni, Chair of Mechanical Engineering, and I are spear-heading a brand new interdisciplinary certificate program between Art & Engineering. We are calling it Leonardo and you can download the brochure here.

Current Project

The Tease interactive boîte d'optique is finished and on display at Bare Hands Gallery for the Birmingham Biennial. I will be posting an essay for the Tease piece soon. In the meantime enjoy these images.

Upcoming Projects
Currently a few projects are in process. I am working on a stop frame animation, a couple of pre-cinematic devices (refer to Tease), and this summer I will be working on a project with Dr. Bharat Soni, Chair of Mechanical Engineering, and his team at the Enabling Technology Lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Current Exhibitions
January 14 - 30: Rogue Space Chelsea's International Juried Show, Chelsea, New York. Juror: David Cohen, editor and publisher of artcritical.com, is also gallery director at the New York Studio School, and was art critic and contributing editor at the New York Sun from 2003-08. He is moderator of the Review Panel which takes place at the National Academy Museum and School of Art.

February 12 - March 6: Logsdon 1909 Gallery's "Desire .10" exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. Juror: Marco Logsdon

February 12 - March 6: University of Alabama at Birmingham's Visual Arts Gallery in the Department of Art's Faculty Exhibition.

April 9 - May 22: Birmingham Biennial 3 at Bare Hands Gallery. Juror: Dan Cameron, former senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York,
currently director of visual art at New Orleans' Contemporary Arts Center and curator of Prospect 1 New Orleans, the largest biennial exhibition ever staged in the US.

May 28 - July 30: The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show at the Indiana University School of Fine Arts Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana. Jurors: Lisa D. Freiman, Ph.D, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Betsy Stirratt, Director of School of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University. Garry Milius, Associate Curator at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

July 31 - September 24: (5) Other People's Projections at K Space Contemporary in Corpus Christi, Texas. 5 video artists have been invited to participate. Jurors: Gerald Lopez (Chair Exhibitions Committee), Michelle Smythe (Director K Space Contemporary) and Jennifer Arnold (Exhibitions Committee and Board Member).