Overview
James is a practising artist with a diverse practice that originated in drawing, sculpture and traditional wet photography, but is currently focused upon ideas and opportunities presented by digital image making (both still and moving).
James' current practice employs multi-layered still and moving digital images to visually ‘encapsulate’ the landscapes passed through during journeys. This body of work is (in part) concerned with how art (and especially contemporary photography) depicts a contemporary ‘landscape’.
An important element in James’ practice has, and continues to include education, and pedagogy. He is committed to ideas such as lifelong learning and the relevance, impact and significance of arts education.
Qualifications
Qualifications
- MA Education (Oxford Brookes University)
- BA (Hons) Fine Art (Sculpture) (University of Wolverhampton)
Teaching Qualification
- Postgraduate Certificate in Education (University of Cambridge)
Teaching
James has been teaching at AUB since 2020 and is currently dividing his time between the development of our new MA Photography (online) course, a series of MA Fine Art theory workshops and Foundation photography. He has worked in and around arts education for more than 20 years.
Research
Research Interests and Projects
The working title for James’ artistic research is Temporal Place(s): Transitory Representations of the Landscape and is based around an investigation of whether the depiction of temporality might lead to a portrayal of the landscape which reflects our contemporary relationship with the land we inhabit and move through.
This body of practical research continues James’ fascination with the representation of the landscape around us as something we inhabit and pass through (rather than stand outside of and admire). Visually he is interested in the fragmentation of the image through layering and folding. His work challenges the documentation of the landscape from a single position, preferring to explore the landscape(s) he passes through in a more holistic way. His most recent work attempts to represent a landscape that is whole, whilst also being fragmented and broken apart. These are multiple images working as one, blending together moments in time, hodological spaces and locations into singular whole(s).