James Kelly

James Kelly creates film and sculptural objects that are concerned with non-waking realities and especially explore a rare type of dream in which he feels the taste and flavour from another reality that seems external to his own subconscious. Through forms of magical thinking, the making of tools, shrines and charged objects, reminiscent of game pieces, glyph-like alphabet forms or ritual items, release is sought from the mundane. Tools he views not just as extensions of the body to facilitate a certain task but items charged by their maker’s intention and their inherent implied purpose, imbued with a certain presence by their user’s actions; a history recorded upon worn surfaces.

He follows an idea that indirect and absurd acts can allow for lateral problem solving and subconscious thought processing. Agreeing and inspired with Derek Jarman's assessment that film is an inherently magical medium, transforming matter into light, James uses Super 8, photography and video as a thought processing vehicle.

James' video works, at times involving these sculptural forms, address the treatment of rural landscapes as a resource rather than a symbiotic companion, the contrast between what is considered natural with our differing concepts of ‘nature’, and the vertical layering of histories in particular places. They capture acts and performances and rituals, irrational or inscrutable, carried out within visions of human-effected landscapes.