Gareth James,
2005
Gareth James works at the intersection of theory and practice in the form of objects, images, writing, and pedagogy. His work often reacts to ideas of economy and production, while also displaying humor and inventiveness in outcomes that deal with the objective nature of art. Gareth is a co-founder of the Scorched Earth publication and was one of the founding members of the cooperatively organized Orchard Gallery. He currently teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
James’s work is constituted through his abiding interest in histories of iconoclasm in which the social divisions and inequities that mark and delimit artistic practice are registered most emphatically. In James’ practice as an artist and as a writer, conventional aesthetic discourse is lost and rediscovered in neighboring fields such as topology or psychoanalysis; capitalist property relations are seen to exert as much determinative force on the visual field as phenomenological bodies; and theoretical materials are indistinct from physical ones in an incipient philosophy of materials. In his teaching, James incorporates a wide base of theoretical paradigms and experimental methodologies in order to examine the fullest extension of the field of art.
