Dominic Harris is a British artist based in London. His work explores how an encounter with an artwork can change what we see and how we respond.
Natural subjects recur throughout his practice, alongside portraits, cultural symbols and systems shaped by live information. Working from his London studio, Harris brings together drawing, sculpture, code and engineering to explore beauty, fragility and the influence we have on the world around us.
His training in architecture informs this approach: the object, its setting and the experience of the viewer are considered as parts of the same work.
Beauty draws the viewer closer. A gesture may then disturb a composition, alter its movement or reveal another layer of meaning. Across intimate objects, immersive environments and public installations, Harris examines the relationship between attention, participation and change.
Harris was educated at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Michigan before returning to England to read Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He graduated with top distinctions, qualifying as an architect in 2003, and went on to work for Future Systems, the avant-garde practice of Jan Kaplický.
In 2007, Harris established his studio in Notting Hill, London. Its team of twenty brings together engineering, design, software and fabrication, allowing artworks to be developed, prototyped, assembled and calibrated in one place.
In the foreword to Harris’s solo exhibition Imagine (Halcyon Gallery, 2019), curator Sunny Cheung identifies “a thread of existentialism” running through the work: “a certain preoccupation with flowers, petals, butterflies, and a fascination with metamorphosis and transformative experiences.” The passage points to recurring concerns with presence, fragility and transformation.
Tim Marlow, Director and Chief Executive of the Design Museum and formerly Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Arts, has observed that Harris controls “every aspect of production, from the initial sketches to the realisation of imagery, to the coding, to the physical objects.” His observation describes how closely Harris connects the concept, code and physical form of the work. Marlow’s summation is concise: “Serious play, I think.”
Selected essays and conversations on Harris’s work, its influences and the changing role of the viewer.
View all essays and conversationsMany of Harris’s interactive works use three-dimensional sensors to read a viewer’s movement and alter the image in real time. InFlutter(2011), butterflies scatter as a hand approaches. InNeoBloom(2024), flowers respond to the viewer’s presence. The precise behaviour varies from work to work.
Recent projects extend this approach in different ways.The Promise of Babylon(2025) presents a digital globe of flowers whose seasons change in response to the viewer.Sounds of Liberty(2025) uses a field of digitally painted butterflies to form and disrupt the American flag, revealing live headlines beneath. At the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden,Origins of Imagination (2024), created with the Moveo Art Collection, transforms a visitor’s butterfly drawing into a moving form that joins a shared digital swarm. The work was inspired by children’s drawings found in the margins of Darwin’s manuscript ofOn the Origin of Species, shifting the visitor’s role from observer to participant.
Across these works, Harris moves from digital representations of individual species towards systems shaped by visitor input and live information. The recurring concern is how attention and human action alter what is seen.
Harris has also created officially authorised interactive artworks using Disney characters. He was the only artist permitted to create interactive Disney artworks. InSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs , each character is faithfully rendered and responds to the viewer, bringing movement and choice into one of animation’s best-known narratives. Here, as elsewhere in the practice, the technology is a material through which the idea is realised.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Feeding Consciousness, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2019 Dominic Harris: Imagine, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2023 Salon Art + Design, New York, USA
2016 5 Year Celebration, Priveekollektie Contemporary Art | Design, London, UK
2015 Moments of Reflection, PHOS ART + DESIGN, London, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 Pop Odyssey, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2025 Digital Artist of the Future, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2025 Sacred and Profane, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2024 In Plain Sight, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2023 Art Miami, Miami, Florida, USA
2023 Disney100,ExCeL London, London, UK
2023 Infidels, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2022 High Fidelity, London, UK
2020 US NOW, Halcyon Gallery, London, UK
2019 Beating Wings, Museum Sinclair-Haus, Bad Homburg, Germany
2019 PAD Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
2018 Art Miami, Florida, USA
2018 The Salon New York, New York, USA
2018 If So, What?, Silicon Valley, USA
2017 Design Miami/Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2015 Desire: Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey
2012 London Design Festival, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
2009 Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
2009 Kinetica, London, UK
PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
2025 Markham World Stage, Downtown Markham, Canada
2024 Origins of Imagination, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, Netherlands
2023 Every Wing Has A Silver Lining, Commission, Viva, Norwegian Cruise Line
2022 UNSEEN, Commission, Annabel's, London
2021 All That Flutters Turns To Gold, Commission, Ouronyx, London, UK
2019 Swell, Commission, Spectrum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean Group
2015 Concentric Study, Grand Palais, Paris, France
2014 Emergence, Caviar House & Prunier, London, UK
2009 Beacon, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
2009 DJ Light, Lima, Peru
COLLECTIONS
Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey
Ken Griffin art collection, USA
Steve Cohen art collection, USA
Leonard Lauder art collection, USA
Moveo art collection, The Netherlands
See list of previous exhibitions
MONOGRAPHS
Dominic Harris: Feeding Consciousness. Halcyon Gallery, London, 2023. Hardback, 280 pp, 325 × 260 mm. Solo-exhibition monograph published on the occasion of the inaugural exhibition at 148 New Bond Street (25 May – 28 August 2023). Includes a critical essay by Catherine Mason, an essay by Joachim Pissarro (Portals of Life), and an extended conversation with Tim Marlow OBE.
Dominic Harris: Imagine. Halcyon Gallery, London, 2019. Solo-exhibition catalogue produced for the artist’s first exhibition under Halcyon representation. Foreword by curator Sunny Cheung; includes ‘A Conversation’ with Dominic Harris.
Dominic Harris: Artworks. Cinimod Studio Ltd, London, 2015. Hardback, presenting thirty recent works and installations. Essay by Harman Bains.
BOOKS
Digital Real — Kunst & Nachhaltigkeit Vol. 8: Künstliche Intelligenz + Kunst. Die Mobiliar, Bern, 2017. Catalogue of the eighth edition of Die Mobiliar’s ‘Art and Sustainability’ series, presenting fourteen artists working with digital and virtual subjects. Features the Ruffled artworks; cover image is a Ruffled bird by Dominic Harris.
Trebuchet Magazine, Issue 8: Contemporary Surrealism. ‘Skeuomorphic Resonance: Dominic Harris — Life as Art as Interaction.’ Print quarterly, September 2020. Fourteen-page critical feature beginning on page 78.
A Touch of Code: Interactive Installations and Experiences. Edited by Robert Klanten, Sven Ehmann and Verena Hanschke. Gestalten, Berlin, 2011. Hardback, 256 pp. ISBN 978-3-89955-331-4. International survey of interactive practice; documents Beacon (Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, 2009) and Flutter (2011).
Flügelschlag / Beating Wings: Insects in Contemporary Art. Edited by Stiftung Nantesbuch; foreword by Andrea Firmenich. Distanz Verlag, Berlin, 2019. Paperback, 80 pp. ISBN 978-3-95476-293-4. Catalogue for the Museum Sinclair-Haus exhibition (Bad Homburg, 7 July – 13 October 2019). Documents sixty-eight works by twenty international artists. Dominic Harris featured with Baby Flutter (2012).
Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Volume 2. Texts by Kathleen Forde, Jennifer Blessing, Rainer Fuchs, David A. Ross and Christiane Paul; photography by Ahmet Ertuğ. Ertuğ & Kocabıyık Publishing, Istanbul, April 2013. Hardback in cloth, slipcased, 136 pp, 40.5 × 30.5 cm. ISBN 978-9988-017-37-8. Collection survey; Dominic Harris included with Flutter (2011).
Defy the Darkness. Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, 2009. Exhibition publication documenting Beacon.
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
The Economist. ‘Dominic Harris: Crafting Digital Art from the Stock Market.’ 2022.
FAD Magazine. ‘Studio Visit: Dominic Harris,’ by Jasper Spires. Online, 24 June 2021.
Aesthetica Magazine. ‘AI and Datasets: Feeding Consciousness.’ 2023.
Architectural Digest. Feature on Every Wing Has a Silver Lining (Norwegian Cruise Line Viva commission), 2023.
How to Spend It (Financial Times). Feature on Dominic Harris and how technology is transforming art, 2023.
Sphere Magazine. ‘Dominic Harris at Halcyon Gallery,’ 2023.
Studio International. ‘Dominic Harris — interview: I’m trying to empower the viewer to assume a larger force within the artworks,’ interview by Catherine Mason, filmed and edited by Martin Kennedy. May 2023.
Artnet News. ‘7 Questions for Artist Dominic Harris on Humanizing the Digital Through His Interactive Artworks,’ 2023.
Whitehot Magazine. ‘The American Flag in Contemporary Art.’
Information on the artist Dominic Harris
Third party studies about the artist and his work
Recent events and news about Dominic Harris
A look at how the artworks are produced
Contacting the studio
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