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MARTY ST.JAMES Performance
Art, Video Art and The Digital Print Performance art and video (the moving image), are two areas that I have
been working with for some twenty odd years. Digital media has allowed me to extend further this work into the area of
the printed image. In a way I have been a print maker longer than I dare to
think as the making of videotapes I've often considered to be a form of
printmaking. But at art school I was banned from the printmaking department
as they did not want a performance/video artist involved with this
traditional medium. Some of my video (moving image) works are about staticness and in
contrast my static image print works are often to do with movement. This
allows me complete artistic freedom within the form and the content. The
three digital prints 'Action I', 'II' and 'III' are works that I refer to as
existing somewhere between the static and the moving image. They represent
in my mind Throwness. I have in mind when I say this to people what the
American Indians in New Mexico refer to when they speak of the unclearness
of where mountain and sky begins and ends... And indeed their belief that
all things are animate, alive in some way shape or form. Sculpting In Time Performance Art and Video Art Performance art and video (the moving image) as art forms, are two areas that I am working with. My aim here is to bridge these in order to locate a social sculptural
form. I want to encourage the viewer to see through the projected illusion
(video moving image) and to locate the underlying presence of the physical
surface material upon which the projected image is taking place. If you
like, attempting to break with or indeed highlight the drama of the art
experience. Background I have spent a number of years showing mainly outside of England and London exploring my interest as an artist in time - based media art forms primarily in the areas of Performance and Video art. This has taken me on performance art tours of America, Canada and Europe. Exhibitions in galleries of video works in Japan, Germany and others countries including inclusion in collections such as the National Portrait Gallery in London and showing with the likes of Tony Oursler (USA) and Pierrick Soren (France). Having recently circled the globe following my interest in American Indian and Aboriginal cultures and ideals. And having met with video artists Bill Viola, Nam Jun Paik and in the past Joseph Beuys. At the centre of my activities as an artist there remains two fundamental elements, a thorough belief in visual intelligence and a sense that art is the purist political expression there is, as it involves the individual and his/her creative single act of expression. As a child I recognised visual art as a very fundamental and necessary form of expression at its best profound, visionary and yet often illusive, divorced and yet fully connected to this world of words and meaning. I am interested in the work of Beuys, Kline, Viola and Paik because they have an exploratGravityory and social conscience. Beuys spoke of healing and suggested that all people are artists. Klein suggested putting Klein blue pigment into atomic bombs in order to highlight the craziness of it all i.e. rational thinking. Paik in his recent Guggenheim retrospective shows us the way of daring to think differently with form. Viola talks of the need to realise religions and philosophies in order to shape vision. The indigenous peoples of New Mexico talk about a living mother earth, the living talking attributes of rocks, mountains and other inanimate objects. They speak of the unclearness of where mountain and sky begin and end. The Aboriginal peoples about the notion of ecology which they know and have practised for many thousands of years. We in the West have much to learn. E-mail Marty St.James: Please leave your name and any comments in the 1,000 Windows Gallery Guestbook... The text and images featured in this article are © Copyright Marty St.James 2000. They may not be copied or stored in any archive or retrieval system. |
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