Spanning music videos, editorial photography and art projects, Natasha Cantwell’s work openly embraces awkwardness while drawing from the absurdity of human behaviour. Her hand-printed analogue photographs and 16mm experimental films have been exhibited worldwide, including at the U.S. festival Experiments In Cinema, and the European Media Art Festival and Stuttgart Filmwinter Festival For Expanded Media in Germany.

Cantwell holds a Bachelor of Graphic Design and a Postgraduate Diploma in Art and Design from AUT. She has guest lectured at Unitec and MIT in New Zealand and presented at Semi Permanent Design Conference in Australia as the senior photographer for Frankie Magazine.

Specialising in fashion, portraiture, still life and environments, her editorial photography has captured the beautifully strange details of everyday life for a wide range of publications, including Elle UK, Ladygunn, No, Pavement, Dumbo Feather, Lunch Lady and Smith Journal, as well as fashion labels Miss Crabb, Penny Sage and Madame Hawke.

As a film programmer, Cantwell founded the Auckland Underground Film Festival and has produced events for Channels: The Australian Video Art Festival. Since 2018 she has curated archival and contemporary street photography for the Victorian Archives Centre Gallery. She is currently based in Melbourne, living and working on Bunurong and Wurundjeri Country.

“Her work is buoyant and sinister, poppy and somber, delightful and disconcerting to watch. She also has an uncanny knack for inviting the viewer with warm, saturated colors and natural light, then throwing them off with severed chicken feet dancing in-sync with a snappy tune. Natasha Cantwell is one of the hard-working, innovative, artist-of-all-trades that the New Zealand milieu, every so often, will produce. Refreshing.”
- Rosie Rowe, Subterranean Films and the Wellington Underground Film Festival.

Email: contact (at) natashacantwell.comInstagram: @natasha.cantwell