EDINBURGH.- Collective presents Migratory Motor Complex, an exhibition by artist James Richards shown in collaboration with Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. The audio installation is re-configured for Collective’s City Dome, having previously appeared at the 57th Venice Biennale and at Chapter in Cardiff, Wales. This new iteration travels to Collective for James Richards’ first solo show in Scotland.
Migratory Motor Complex (2017) features a six-channel electro-acoustic installation that explores the capacity of sound to render artificial spaces and locate sonic and melodic events within them.
Woven throughout the piece are recurrent vocal and musical motifs that have been developed in collaboration with Kirsten Evans and Samuel Williams, students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The work has been tuned in-situ, with Richards reacting to the acoustic contingencies of the City Dome to create a cinematic and multi-sensory experience — an arrangement of vivid emotional cues to be navigated subjectively.
James Richards’ interest lies in the possibility of the private amidst the chaos of everyday media. His work makes use of a growing bank of material that includes found and recorded sound, cinema, works by other artists, camcorder footage, murky late-night TV and archival research.
James Richards (born 1983) was brought up in Cardiff and lives and works in Berlin. He studied for Foundation at UWIC (now Cardiff Metropolitan University) and graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Speed (with Leslie Thornton), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; Crossing (with Leslie Thornton), Secession, Vienna (both 2018); James Richards, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin (2017); Abyss Film, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover; Requests and Antisongs, ICA London; Crumb Mahogany, Bergen Kunsthall and Radio at Night, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux (all 2016).
Selected group exhibitions include: Platforms. Collection and Commissions, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Biennial of Moving Images 2018, The Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve; The Explorers, Part One: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and James Richards, curated by Iwona Blazwick, V-A-C Foundation, Venice; Die Stelle des Schnitts. Renee Green, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, James Richards, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kunstverein Nurnberg; Sixty Years, Tate Britain, London; A Slight Ache (curated by James Richards), Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; Mapping the Invisible: Yebisu International Festival for Arts and Alternative Visions, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (all 2018); Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Less Than Zero, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (2016); British Art Show 8, touring exhibition, UK (2015-16); Ars Viva, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2014-15); Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2014); Cut to Swipe, MoMA, New York, The Encyclopaedic Palace, 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale de Venezia, Venice, Frozen Lakes, Artists Space, New York (all 2013).
