ABOUT APARTMENT HD
Together, two lines of enquiry converge in Apartment HD, a collaborative investigation into the spiritual, visual, and psychological textures of contemporary space.
Artist Statements
Natasha Lara Hughes
Natasha’s practice emerges from a deeply personal trajectory shaped by lived experience, including her escape from a situation of captivity and abuse that impacted both herself and her infant daughter. Her work operates as a form of visual testimony—an articulation of survival, resilience, and transformation. Through image-making, she seeks spaces of stillness and transcendence, evoking the quiet persistence of faith that sustained her through profound trauma.
Her compositions are marked by a dynamic minimalism: environments that are at once charged and contemplative, energetic yet serene. These works offer moments of pause and reflection amid the relentless velocity of contemporary life. Drawing upon architectural forms, geometric restraint, and the poetics of light and line, Natasha investigates the relationship between the human body, consciousness, and constructed space—both interior and exterior.
A longstanding engagement with abstraction underpins her approach. In contrast to her more purely abstract painting and sculptural practices, her two-dimensional works often hover in a liminal zone between figuration and abstraction. Almost-recognizable forms surface and recede, referencing memory, spatial disorientation, and fleeting perceptual encounters. The result is a pictorial space imbued with a subtle vibrational energy—what the artist describes as a "universal song," an underlying frequency resonating within silence itself.
Recent interdisciplinary collaborations have expanded her practice, deepening her engagement with photography. This medium now informs new developments in drawing and painting, enabling a cross-pollination of methods and conceptual frameworks. These evolving bodies of work can be explored further in the Artworks section of the website.
James Dean Diamond
These experimental works capture the fleeting pulse of the city, through a photographic inner and external monologue. The deconstruction of urban landscapes into abstract, painterly narratives, unveil the hidden, metaphorical currents that flow beneath the surface of the metropolis. A spiritual electric storm is revealed coursing through the veins of the city, creating a dynamic, yet poetic and introspective state of mind. Transcending conventional street-style documentation, this photography reimagines the city as a living, breathing force - a realm of infinite untold narratives.
Diamond’s perspective emerges from a neurological and ocular condition that alters his visual perception. What might be seen as distortion becomes, for him, a lens of truth. His photographic practice reflects a constant negotiation with disorientation, pain, and sensory overload. Yet through this fractured way of seeing, Diamond uncovers a unique aesthetic—surreal, dreamlike, and emotionally resonant. His images transform the familiar urban environment into something estranged yet intimate, echoing both alienation and deep presence. Influenced by abstraction in painting, his photographs document a lived reality shaped by visual impairment, turning personal trauma into visual revelation. Through the medium of what he terms “photozographia,” the artist engages with the urban environment not merely as geographical sites, but as spaces charged with spiritual and poetic resonance.
Ultimately, Diamond’s work constitutes a deeply personal yet broadly resonant inquiry into the nature of perception, memory, and trauma. Diamond’s work reconfigures visual impairment as a generative force within artistic practice, transforming personal affliction into a distinct aesthetic vocabulary.
Biographies
James Dean Diamond studied Photography at the London College of Printing and completed his Master’s in Fine Art at Brighton University. He has exhibited across Europe and the U.S., and his work has been featured in numerous publications and blogs. He was Artist in Residence at Sussex University for three years, where he created photography and sound-based installations — one of which was nominated for the 2023 Prix Pictet Award. He was also sponsored by Polaroid for pioneering a new technique using their Polapan and Polagraph instant films.
Natasha Lara Hughes studied at Chelsea College of Art and was awarded a scholarship to pursue her Master’s at the Royal College of Art. Her multidisciplinary practice has been shaped by living in Paris, Rome, New York, Tokyo, and most recently the Andalusian region of southern Spain. Selected by Blains Fine Art (later Blain|Southern), she has exhibited at L'École des Beaux-Arts Paris, Hoax Gallery London, and Peeps Gallery. Her current work spans drawing, painting, sculpture, writing, and photography.
Apartment HD works are represented online by Singulart, and they have recently contributed to group exhibitions with associated galleries across Europe and America, further expanding the dialogue around their evolving visual language.
Together, their lines of enquiry converge in Apartment HD, a collaborative investigation into the spiritual, visual, and psychological textures of contemporary space.