Return to the Gallery

.

.

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.

In the 1990s digital media has changed the working nature of aspects of my work as an artist, what was once analogue video has now become digital moving images worked with via the computer. My interest in performance art and the moving image has led me to explore the static image in movement and indeed discover aspects of it in a two dimensional form.

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.

'The Hat Series' (3 of 20) 'hat action', 'jump into the hat' and 'broken' extends the notion or idea of the relationship in time and space between person (living) and object (not living) but here a piece of clothing which is worn and removed frequently is the chosen item. The reference to Joseph Beuys is deliberate, the hat in these digital works met Beuys' hat on three occasions and so a passing art/life historical link is intended.

'Gravity', 'Lost 1', 'Lost 2' is a sequence of three digital prints exploring interior and exterior space through action.

'Flying into the void' (from a series of 14 digital prints) 'loosening the knot', 'whirling log', 'transformation'. Having recently completed a forty thousand mile journey mainly by aeroplane around the world, these pieces are an attempt to fly. They suggest different types of space and time to fly in and through - a mental shift in itself.

I have an unyielding belief that the purpose of art is not to declare boundaries but to highlight, move across and between areas and ways of thinking, definitely a form of visual intelligence.


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.

In the 1990s digital media has changed the working nature of aspects of my work as an artist, what was once analogue video has now become digital moving images. My interest in Performance and the moving image has led me to explore the static image in movement allowing me to extend further this work into the area of the printed image. I call these works somewhere between the static and the moving image. 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 that all things are animate. In a way I have been a print maker longer than I dare to think as the making videotapes is also a form of printmaking. I am motivated by much of what I refer to below but also by an unyielding belief that the purpose of art is not to declare boundaries but to highlight and move across areas and ways of thinking.

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:

mstj@compuserve.com

Please leave your name and any comments in the 1,000 Windows Gallery Guestbook...

Guestbook

 Back   Next

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.

.

.
 Click an image to view it full size