James Smith | Temporal Dislocation

James Smith

James Smith

James Smith

Photofusion is pleased to announce the first London photography exhibition of James Smith who recently graduated from the Royal College of Art’s MA Photography course. A selection of eight large format images from his project Temporal Dislocation (2012) invite the viewer on a journey through the British Landscape. The exhibition is accompanied with text from Professor Alexander García Düttmann.

Smith uses photography to capture evidence of man’s contemporary and historical relationship with landscape, and the nuances of activity that are made manifest by edifices and constructions within it. From Brutalist architecture to towering stacks of hay, these dislocated forms of quasi ‘sculptures’ are evidential signs of power, class and labour.

Temporal Dislocation is a photography exhibition that explores the fine line between stability and impermanence, and the inexorably cyclical nature of the physical environment after human intervention. A primary intent of the work is to expose how form follows function in order to reveal the inherent aesthetics and resonances contained within that of ‘the found’.

Underpinning the work is a desire to bridge the divide between the photographer’s explicit framing of the constructed landscape and the casual viewer’s benign, unknowing or unconscious dismissal of its functions and attributes.

In Saatchi Art & Music magazine, Louise Clarke comments that the images in this project are “flirtatious, instilling in the viewer curious, furtive, uneasy feelings as they coolly scrutinise the traces of our dwellings, our backyard environments. Neither cruel nor complimentary, they are careful, unblinking studies – non- judgmental images that get up close to the real beauty and legacy of utopian vision.”

James Smith currently lives and works in London and Northampton. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2012 and has had solo shows in the London Overspill – UH Gallery, Hatfield 2012, and the Luton Overlay Departure Lounge, Luton 2012/13. His work has also been selected for group exhibitions in the Liverpool Biennial 2012 and the NN Gallery, Northampton, 2012/13.