ann-marie james
Central to my practice is a spirit of curiosity; in science, technology, popular culture or the language and systems of art itself. I explore these themes in a range of media, including objects, painting, drawing and text. One of my most recent projects is a series of drawings entitled ‘Limited Means’ which uses restricted materials – one blue ball-point pen and as many sheets paper as needed – to explore the ephemeral nature of the corporeal. The (currently ongoing) series of anatomical drawings will be complete when the ballpoint pen runs out. ‘The Universal Positioning Device’ is a simple pendant designed to be worn around the neck. Inscribed on one side of the gold disc is a diagram, on the other the words “YOU ARE HERE”. The diagram is an extract from those inscribed on the cover of ‘The Golden Record’ - a time-capsule included in NASA’s Voyager II space probe. The image is a pulsar map showing the location of the solar system with respect to 14 pulsars. I like the idea that no matter where you are in the world when you are wearing the ‘Universal Positioning Device’ it can tell you exactly where you are. ‘The Uncertainty Principle’ is a tattoo in 2 parts, one to be worn by the artist and the other by the owner of the work. Both tattoos illustrate Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. In this work I seek to explore the symbiotic relationship between ‘the artist’ and ‘the collector’. My recent series of paintings explore mark making it itself, and the relationship between the aesthetics of traditional media and the digitization of the painted image. The paintings explore the juxtaposition of the contrived with the impulsive, the deliberate with the gestural. Furthering a dialogue on realism in abstraction, studies in oil and acrylic are rendered as pixilated images in a range of media, including oil, acrylic, cross-stitch embroidery and small painted wooden sculpture. A graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, I live and work in London.