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showcase your art to thousands
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| James R Ford | |
1980 - Born in Surrey |
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| About the Artist | |
James R Ford is a British artist whose practice is concerned with childlike and adolescent past-times, pursuits and obsessions. His body of work consists of projects and investigations based around observations, process and play: spanning drawing, animation, assemblage sculpture, installation and film. He also utilises the Internet as a means of creating and displaying ideas and projects. |
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| Click to enlarge images (if larger image has been loaded) |
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The Bond Formula
2005 |
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| Burning the midnight oil, singing along with Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger and smoking too many cigarettes whilst studying advanced mathematics techniques. Trying to calculate a series of graphs to represent the time distribution of events in the James Bond films. To show the spread and average time for each of the "necessary" scenes that appear in each movie. Making it possible for the obsessive fan to predict the approximate times of key events in the as yet unmade 21st Bond film. |
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House Gymnastics
2002-present |
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| This faux fitness regime is akin to an internet based, Fluxus "happening", which often encouraged maximum audience participation. The viewer connects with House Gymnastics because it reminds them of their childhood, when they used to climb around the house and explore, with the desire to be one of their wall-climbing heroes like Batman or Spiderman. House Gym empowers the banal domestic setting with new meaning and excitement. |
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General Carbuncle
2006 |
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| Transforming a second-hand Ford Capri into the General Lee, from the Dukes of Hazzard, by covering it in little toy cars. Over four thousand toy cars were needed and so, in addition to searching out and purchasing appropriate toy cars himself, an appeal was started for people all over the world to send him their disused toy cars. The donator could leave a little message in the toy car, or mark it in some way, so they actually became part of the art whilst contributing to the sculpture and thus creating a global art collaboration. |
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Nose Heavy Plane
2007 |
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| For this work Ford was focused on the playground activity of making paper aeroplanes. Many different designs (of varying difficulty) were folded, flown and documented in the process. The drawings are studies of these planes handmade by Ford - the subtle depiction of warped edges and uneven folds conveys their pathos and imperfection.
This body of work was first shown in the PURE_drawing+illustration exhibition at FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, January 2008. |
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A Thousand Cranes
2007-2008 |
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| Origami cranes have great significance in Japan – the giving of a folded crane to someone is to wish them a safe journey home, and legend has it that if a person makes a thousand cranes they will be granted a wish by the Japanese Gods. By giving in to his obsession with Origami, Ford folded 1,000 cranes in all colours, patterns and types of paper and displayed them as a large installation. His adjacent studies take the form of watercolour and Gouache paintings of the folded cranes. |
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Golden Blossom
2008 |
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| In a cyclical way he turned his studies into patterns, created his own paper designs and used these to fold more cranes. Ford has also created a computer animation of infinitely spinning rainbow cranes and large intricate pattern prints, inspired by the numerous Origami papers used, which references the more contemporary Japanese culture. |
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Rubik Die
2008 |
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| Constructed from 27 Rubik's Cubes, each one twisted by hand to fit a designated pattern so that when stacked together they form a large six-sided die. Colour coded in accordance with the original Rubik's design (yellow opposite red, green opposite orange, white opposite blue). |
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Fine green and violet scribbles filling a white circle
2009 |
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| On a small scale, scribbling with a pen or pencil can fill time when bored. But when done on a large scale, the time consuming and repetitive nature of the act itself becomes boring, setting up an interesting paradox: that which is supposed to relieve boredom actually causes it, thus defeating its own objective. |
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Hit Me With Your Best Shot
2008 |
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| This durational film features no tuneful audio - only the pathetic clicks and twangs produced by the plastic guitar controller can be heard as Ford plays his way through all 39 solo career songs in the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock game.
In the sixteen week run up to Christmas 2008, Ford launched a participatory project in direct relation to this video work. Entitled HMWYBS Mystery Tracks, video clips of individual 'songs' were published on YouTube weekly and viewers were invited to guess which track was being played. |
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Hypnobopit
2009 |
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| The recorded audio emanating from the structure documents Ford completing the Bop It game's solo challenge in a monotonous 5 and a half minute session. The physical object was constructed in-between bouts of practicing the game, so the audio and visual progressed simultaneously. |
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33 things to do before you're 10 (installed)
2007-2009 |
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| Over a 4-week residency period at FERREIRA PROJECTS, Ford created a room-sized installation filled with photography, handmade objects, looped video footage and leftover debris; a haphazard collection of documentation from the deceptively gruelling 33 things to do before you're 10 project.
Some of the 33 things, if lost or damaged previously, were remade for this incarnation of the project, including the home baked cakes which were cut into pieces and handed out at the opening of the exhibition. Parts of the installation such as the potted cress, sandcastle and cake remnants are ephemeral and decay/disintegrate over the duration of the show. |
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| Education and biography | |
| EDUCATION 2005 - 2006 Master of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, UK 2004 - 2005 Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, UK 1999 - 2002 Bachelor of Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2009 Only Boring People Get Bored, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK 2008 Duchamp Played Chess; I Made Cranes, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK 2004 Backseat Tuna Town, Taxi Gallery, Cambridge, UK 2003 Crem Brulay: the art of House Gymnastics, Northern Lights Gallery, Bristol, UK; Brahm Gallery, Leeds, UK The 25th Element, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham, UK 2001 Layers of Trifle, Bonington Building, Nottingham, UK SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2009 Encounters with Scale, Portman Gallery, London, UK Sale, The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK 2008 Irregular Pulse, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK PURE_drawing+illustration, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK 2007 Designersblock @ 100% Design Tokyo, Jingu Gaien, Tokyo, Japan Stick*Stamp*Fly, Gasworks, London, UK 4C: SightSeeing Tour, GUM Factory, Saatchi & Saatchi, London, UK Driven, Fieldgate Gallery, London, UK Extreme Crafts, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania Feel Good Feel Bad Boys and Girls, Lange Gasse 28, Ausberg, Germany 2006 GIFT, Museum MAN, Liverpool, UK Your Gallery@The Guardian, The Guardian Newsroom Gallery, London, UK Objects in Waiting, End Gallery, Sheffield, UK Knock Down Ginger, MyHouse Gallery, Nottingham, UK Kitson Kaleidoscope, Kitson Road, London, UK Terrible Toy Fair III, CBGB Art Gallery, New York, USA Another Product - Britishness, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK 2005 Never Finished, Always Ready, 75 Brushfield Street, London, UK Bound_less, The Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway 2004 Pictoplasma Conference, Cafe Moskau, Berlin, Germany Exhibit.001 (Nth-Art), Ols $ Co Gallery, London, UK 2003 Re-Form, The Art Exchange Gallery, Nottingham, UK Trailing Cables, PEA Gallery & 291 Gallery, London, UK Disposable Generation, Bridlesmith Gate Gallery, Nottingham, UK Made@Home, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK 2002 Blueprint, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK 2001 Starbucks, Sex and Space Invaders, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK Curried Trout, The Art Exchange Gallery, Nottingham, UK PUBLICATIONS 2008 Duchamp Played Chess; I Made Cranes, FERREIRA PROJECTS, UK 2007 4C: SightSeeing Tour, GUM Factory, UK 2006 GROK: An Introduction to New Media Art, Interactive CD-ROM, Rhizome.org 2004 House Gymnastics, Random House/Ebury Press, UK BIBLIOGRAPHY 2009 Hunter, A., REVIEW: Only Boring People Get Bored, Art Journal Online, 4 March Essential things to see and do this month, Grafik, Issue no.171, March Recommended exhibitions this month, Art World, UK/Int'l Edition - Issue 9, Feb / Mar News in Pictures, Design Week, 22 January 2008 London for Free: James R Ford, Metro (London), 24 April Essential things to see and do this month, Grafik, Issue no.161, April 2007 Pick of the Month - 4C: SightSeeing Tour, Creative Review, August 2006 Maynard, G., I stuck 4,342 toy cars on my old motor, Daily Express, 27 November Phillips, A., From Ford Capri to General Lee, Southwark News, 7 September Denes, M., Curate your own exhibition, The Guardian (G2), 6 September Wilson, J., The art of smoking, LeftLion Magazine, Issue no.10, Spring Eisele, K., Mex sport: House Gymnastics, Mex magazine (Switzerland), April 2005 Pepper, T., Making their own breaks, Newsweek International, 26 Sep - 3 Oct Marchen, J., Hjemmefitness, Berlingske Tidende newspaper (Denmark), 9 April 2004 Hughes, G., Bogey Ball, Bizarre Magazine, Issue no.89, August Perbos, L., Blanco, S., Latherrade, F., Do it Yourself, Buy-Sellf, Issue no.4 (France), May Hearn, K., Chocolate starfish goes online, BBC-i Beds, Herts and Bucks (www.bbc.co.uk), published online 18 March Poulson, A., But is it art?: General Carbuncle, Dazed&Confused, March 2003 Adams, T., Tips for a happy new you, The Observer, 28 December Shields, A., Frothy table reading, Time Out London, 10-17 December Eyre, H., How extreme is your house?, The Independent on Sunday, 07 December The Most Remarkable things in Culture this Month, Esquire Magazine, December The World in Pictures, Hello! Magazine, Issue no.784, 30 September Moore, C., The Spectator’s Notes, The Spectator, 13 September Wood, L., How to muscle in at home, Metro Newspaper, 19 August Zweifel, P., Don’t try this at home: Jackass in the Living room, 20 Minuten Newspaper, Basel, Switzerland, 7 May Kwok, D., Inside the World of House Gymnastics, Tablet Newspaper, Seattle, USA, Issue no.66, April Jenkins, W., Driving me up the wall, Dazed&Confused, February RESIDENCIES 2009 Artist in Residence, 33 things to do before you're 10, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK 2008 Artist in Residence, Duchamp Played Chess; I Made Cranes, FERREIRA PROJECTS, London, UK 2004 PVA LabCulture, ArtSway, New Forest, Hampshire, UK |
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| Website: www.jamesrford.com | |
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