Collateral, Venice
James Richards
Music for the Gift
Wales in VeniceJames Richards’ interest lies in the possibility of the private amidst the chaos of quotidian media. His work makes use of a growing bank of material that includes cinema, works by other artists, camcorder footage, murky late night TV and archival research. Means of producing and displaying images are central to his methodology and he unpacks the image as both subject and object, unfolding ways in which fragments of the present can connect with those of the past, the hidden with the visible, and the sentient with the physical. Richards’ presentation includes Migratory Motor Complex (2017), 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 re-occurring 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 then been tuned in situ, with Richards reacting to the acoustic contingencies of the site as he creates a cinematic and multi-sensory experience — an arrangement of vivid emotional cues to be navigated subjectively. What weakens the flesh is the flesh itself (2017) is a video made with collaborator Steve Reinke. The starting point for the work is a series of images found in the private archive of Albrecht Becker — a production designer, photographer and actor imprisoned by the Nazis for being homosexual. Amongst pictures of friends and photographs taken whilst serving in World War II is a collection of staged self-portraits that reveal an obsessive commitment to body modification, tattooing and his own image: duplicated, repeated and reworked with collage and darkroom revision. This extraordinary collection of images serves as the backbone for the video, an extended meditation on the archive, photography and the body. The double self-portrait is redoubled, repeatedly — a mise en abyme; the self is lost as the flesh proliferates, escaping death, returning as a thin image resonant with desire and possibility. Rushes minotaur (2017) is an installation of inkjet prints that draw on two distinct images: a close- up of crumbling skin from a medical book, and the tarpaulin-shielded façade of a shop. Cut together and then rescanned, these simple visual cues and combinations of found images are disrupted and reinstated through a scanning process that stretches and stacks them into different combinations. A publication, present throughout the exhibition, contains a text by the writer Chris McCormack. The narrative moves between the intimate and the scientific and reflects upon the breaking of the male voice. Shifting between first and third person, the text meets Richards’ exhibition at an oblique angle, like his images that oscillate between unfettered documentary and a more neurotic interior territory. 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 '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); 'James Richards', Kunstverein Munchen (2015); 'Raking Light', Cabinet (2014), and 'Not Blacking Out Just Turning The Lights Off', Chisenhale London (2011). Selected group exhibitions include '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); 'Saltwater: A Theory Of Thought Forms', 14th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 'Walks', Andrew Kreps, New York, 'Safe', Home, Manchester (all 2015); 'Ars Viva Prize', Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2014-15); 'Burning Down The House', 10th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, South Korea, 'Cut to Swipe', MoMA, New York, 'Looking Back: The Eighth White Columns Annual' (selected by Pati Hertling), White Columns, New York (all 2014); 'Meanwhile... Suddenly and Then', 12th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, 'The Image Thought', Kamel Mennour Gallery, Paris, 'Otherwise Unexplained Fires', Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, 'The Encyclopaedic Palace', 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale de Venezia, Venice (all 2013). Richards was a recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2015), The Jarman Award for Film and Video (2012) and was shortlisted for the 2014 Turner Prize. Richards was selected for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. James Richards is represented by Cabinet, London, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin and Rodeo, London.