JAMES MAY.

poem made from random words taken from Jean Baudrillards the transparency of evil.

Rules.

Every 21st word, every other page, until bored. 

In liberation of the

every liberated orgy

some us the 

reduplication thing

all to power! 

the stage a physicists 

it's the value

value by proportion 

has approaches could own in 

metaphor

total economics

in self to water 

it's of is diluted 

not affairs artistic.

LIBERATION! 

has power negotiating. 

                         The kiss

kiss, snog , make - out , make - up , fall in love , fall out of love , heart break.

                                                      The girl

My work is centred around language and text, and the categories they create, I construct narratives that seem to have human character from inane objects - a paper chain becomes a control freak, a toilet brush holder becomes a shy boyfriend losing his way in a relationship - texts are teased until they become a  ‘humanised abstraction’ and then are read as ‘I’ the artist, my tone becoming the centre for any number of characters.

 

The images come separately, I take an image or a drawing that I already feel has some currency, such as a news item or piece of history, then highlight the parts I feel are important with shapes, the rest of the image is faded away until it becomes a block colour, by doing this I simultaneously highlight a sub text to the narrative, and refuse to give a face or place to the story I have developed, under lining it’s fiction.

 

By exploiting the tension between the narrative and an abstract image I try to create a gap in which the viewer to fall and become apart of the work, and hopefully question the typical engagement a viewer might have with a ‘narrator’ or ‘creator’, making clear the separation between art/media/television/design.

 

I often ask the viewer questions ‘Do you find this valuable?’ ‘What is my opinion worth?’ ‘How much do you want for me?’ in order to share my vulnerability and to reduce the size of the pedestal between ‘artist’ and ‘the public’ in my work I am constantly reminding the viewer of the normality of my existence and artists existence and the fiction that is any kind of art ‘market’

 

My text is sometimes used in other forms - bunting of popular song lyrics, and placards of other people’s text messages - by allowing the viewer to engage with these objects and photographing this scene they become the missing image to the text, they become the character the story and a narrative I am yet to write, they are part of this sense of ‘creation’ of an art object, I aim for them to become as pedestaled as the ‘Art’. This allows space for the boundaries between artist and viewer, narrator and reader, self and other and between relationships and closure to be re addressed.

 

 

 

Hey, I need you to promise me something, and you can’t tell anyone I’ve told you – I’m still completely in love with Anthony and he doesn’t feel the same way and I don’t know how to get over it. So please please can you not mention him around me anymore. I miss him too much.

 

Hiya, think I just saw you down the road? I was shouting your name over and over but you must have had your head phones in..Right? Well, it’s been ages since we had that date, we should meet up soon? Anyway, bye! 

untitled story with images.

I went to this house for a cup of tea once, in response to an advert, the advert said ‘HOPE, I can provide this over a cup of tea and biscuit, don’t believe me? Then call this number.’ I showed it to my friends and we laughed, what a lonely man must live in this house we thought.

A as time went on more adverts appeared, ‘LOVE, need love? I can help you; we all need somebody to love.
‘INTIMACY come over, have a hug, and feel alive once more’ ‘are you SCARED? Let me show you how to see in the dark, the monsters aren’t so scary when you get to know them’

It was a Monday morning when I finally stopped and looked at the front of the house, I stared up the garden path, it was covered in pink blossom which made it seem so friendly and feminine.

The idea that this person may be in some way in touch with his ‘feminine’ side made it all the easier to stand there.

I thought about the adverts INTIMACY, LOVE, HOPE – did I not crave all these things? Did I not still at the age of 22 still dance longingly around my room to ‘How soon is now’ By the smiths ‘I am human and I need to be lo-ah-oved’ ‘ just like every body else does’ wondering when or even if I’ll ever experience my first kiss?

I didn’t have any money – I wondered if I would have to pay him, I did not want to feel any pressure to pay him any other way, I fantasised of him. Tall and handsome, in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the sleeves, dark brown side parted hair, an older but kind face, a lovely man... Maybe his wife died a few years ago and he had been looking for someone ever since? Maybe he was a writer, like me, maybe he danced around his room too?

I knocked on the door and on the third knock I realised the door was not at all shut, I walked in through the main corridor towards what I guessed was the kitchen , even on this sunny day the house was overly hot and filled with a sense of sweat. But it was clean.

‘Hello?’ I mumbled? I am here... About the advert?.. I want hope, love, and intimacy? I know you must be lonely but.. It’s okay... So am I... Intimacy... Is such an abstract term to me, it’s so un- common to me. That’s why I came, because I realised, I am SCARED.’

As the words left my mouth and filtered through the air like germs I saw the table, gingham table cloth, red, Victoria sponge cake and pot after pot of tea , I picked up the pot’s , freezing cold , I looked at the sponge cake , it was rotting away .. Suddenly I felt a presence in the room; I pulled my self up slowly, and began to look around - fridge. Oven. Work surface. Windows. Legs.

My heart stopped and I couldn’t breath , I began to trace the legs up , brown trousers , further up , pink shirt , messy , further up , rope , further up . I didn’t look further up.

Instead I looked right back down – I was filled with heart break , it raged through me , I was disappointed in this man , who was to be my saviour , my hero , my guiding light – what was I going to do now? Who would help me?

I put my selfish needs to one side long enough to call an ambulance.

I walked out the house and looked down at the blossom, it swirled around me and into the street, I felt like I was already at my stranger’s funeral – ashes scattered.

Three weeks later love hit me like a hole in the head and I forgot all about my hero, he did post one last advert, I guess he had asked the paper to print it before he decided he couldn’t wait any longer for friendship to find him.

‘LOVE, FEAR, INTIMACY, HOPE’ are just words, don’t be a voyeur of life, dance around your room forever.

I am sorry , but tea has had to be cancelled.

HOPE

My Mother told me
If I was goody
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly
My Auntie told her
I'd kissed a soldier
Now she won't buy me
A rubber dolly