mradamjames

I work across the disciplines of sculpture, performance and film, mixing traditional processes with slapstick and the observations of modern day social tragedies. My practice seeks to exhume the hidden narratives dwelling in the darker recesses of society. By deconstructing and re-staging encounters with fringe characters my films, performances and statues raise questions of the 'artists' role as voyeur and the audiences role as a spectator.

The relentless dramas on the street are what keep me engaged: I am attracted to the odd gestures, peculiar voices, laughs and awkward encounters that I am witness to every day. My work is the product of the inevitable osmosis of these observations. My performances take examples of these momentary gestures and inflate them into the absurd. I take my references from the anonymous man, the local ‘weirdo’ and the ones on the bus you shouldn’t look at but do. I observe them, then copy their every move in order to invent a story about them. They are reconfigured as characters in a performance or in a sculpture where I play on the obvious clichés and stereotypes of the vagabond.

These anonymous scoundrels and jesters, drunk and unwieldy on the streets, have become the modern day witches, scapegoats of a brutally capitalist system; laughed at by many, pitied by few. The wasted land of their paths becomes the fabric of my work.