LONDON.- Combining found objects with natural and industrial materials, James Ireland makes sculptures that reformat specific textures of our shared environment. Recent works are overtly concerned with urban space. Tubular lines cast inside bicycle inner tubes droop, hang and pose. Burger cartons are stacked to form plinth-like towers. Steel mesh is welded into boxes that define and cage a spray-painted form. An orange shoelace and clear plastic cable-ties grip twisted concrete.
Traces of the materiality of a city and its architecture connect to an interest in functionality and the mundane. What are the things that work so well they become standardised and therefore ubiquitous in our culture? The circulation of material use and re-use is a central concern. But the fabrication of these succinct objects has a care and density of feeling that is in tension with the idea of the readymade.
Ireland’s sculptural processes involve the manipulation of the possibilities of materials, with liquids rapidly solidifying and things being layered or masked. These processes are often withheld from the viewer. In the gallery space the sculptures each carve out their own coordinates in time and space.
James Ireland (b.1977, Derby) studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. Solo exhibitions include James Ireland, Art-O-Rama, Marseille, 2008; The Difference Between Truth And Honesty, FA Projects, London, 2007; You Mistake My Horror For Love, Economist Plaza, London, 2007; Straight Lines Are Curves From Very Large Circles, FA Projects, London, 2005; This Is A Test, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, 2005; All Of The Known Universe, Spike Island, Bristol, 2003. In 2014 he completed a sculptural commission for Kingfisher Court Mental Health Centre, Radlett, Hertfordshire. Group exhibitions include Glass Cat – parts 1 and 2, Wimbledon Space, and Danielle Arnaud, London, 2013; Always Greener: Views from the Contemporary Countryside, PM Gallery, Ealing, 2012; Memory of a Hope, Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool, 2011; Material Presence, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2008; Peace and Agriculture in a Pre-Romantic Ideal Landscape Without Sublime Terrors, Haunch of Venison, Berlin, 2008; Super-Sampling Anti-Aliased, Dreizehnzwei, Vienna, 2007; Uncanny Nature, ACCA, Melbourne, 2006; Fabrique du Sublime, La Galerie Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec, France, 2005; Scape, CAC, Vilnius, 2005.
