Existing somewhere between the moving and the static is an excellent description of the work of and intentions of artist St. James. Stepping, as if from one stone to another he has created artworks primarily in performance art, video art, photography and drawing. He describes it as exploring the physical, the electronic and the pencil equally. A time based media artist straddling modernist and post-modernist times. His work locates itself between the narrative of meaning and the meaninglessness of re-assemblage. A type of visual Beckett. St..James, who invented the video portrait, has exhibited in leading museums and galleries in the US, Europe, Russia, South America and Japan. He is Professor of Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.
Forty of his video pieces have been archived by the British Film Institute in the UK including Mr and Mrs (1976) his first video work based on a television game show appearance and Metamorphosis (Headcake 1998). During the 1980’s a number of his video works were broadcast on national television including Timecode (Heartbeat 1988) shown in a number of countries worldwide. The Video Portraits of the 1990’s are some of his best known works including The Swimmer an 11 monitor installation work in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. These works ranged from miniature single monitor video objects to large multi-monitor installations.
St .James has represented Britain abroad in a number of exhibitions, performance art events, video screenings and festivals via the British Council and Arts Council, including, Electronically Yours at the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo (1998) and Artec Nagoya, Japan (1995). During 2000 his year- long inter-active digital work Picture Yourself showed at the Scottish National Galleries celebrating the millennium with the public able to see themselves projected on the museum walls. In 2000 his Boy / Girl video diptych showed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Painting the Century, 101 Portrait Masterpieces from the 20th century including Picasso, Freud, Bacon, Warhol, Munch etc…
Running through St.James’ works there
has been a sense of self-portraiture or the portraiture
of others. In his recent shows in Moscow, The
Journey of St Maurin (2002) and New York Somewhere
or Between (2005) there has been a sense
of the artist involved in a struggle to locate
an inner sense of self and being.
On the subject of his
drawings St.James describes his paper works as ‘thinking
actions’, things that land and are fought
onto the paper via thinking.
…. Marty St.James believes that art only matters if the artist has something important to say, that his or her work is not simply an item of commercial transaction. His is an Apollonian discourse rather than a Dionysian one. For him art is a way of thinking in the visual rather than the making of a heroic statement or precious object. He is in tune with Bachelard’s notion that the embodiment of knowledge exists in the action of making, rather than in the object of the finished piece. His intention is to investigate “the stringing together of moments in frame type form to explore surface and time.” ‘ a time based artist media artist straddling both modernist and post-modernist times..’
Sue Hubbard, Arts Critic The Independent Newspaper, London
Selected exhibitions
Solo
2006 Time-based Drawings, Hackney
Forge Gallery, London
2005 Somewhere or
in Between, Chelsea Art Museum, New
York
2003 The Journey of St.Maurin,
National Centre For Contemporary Art, Moscow
2001 Betweeness Galerie
der Gegwart, Wiesbaden, Germany
New works - Marty St.James The Standpoint Gallery,
London
Scores Gallery @ Oxo, London
Betweeness, Colville
Place Gallery, London
(www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2001/01/24)
2000 Picture Yourself Scottish
National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
An inter-active digital
video / print installation sponsored by Sony
Broadcast UK and Macmillan Electronics UK December
1999 - January
1997 Video Works Amongst
The Permanent Collection, Ferens Museum
and Art Gallery, Hull
1994 New works Gallery ‘M’ London
new digital prints and video object works
1991 New Video Portraits,
101 Gallery, Ottawa,Canada
Video
Portretten, Het Recept, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1990 Hotel,
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
1990 Video Portraits National
Portrait Gallery
1989 Hotel,
Air Gallery, London
1987 Romance Don’t
Dance Alone, Video installation and drawings
Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
Jerusalem Spacex
Gallery, Exeter
Jerusalem Hacienda
night club, Manchester
1985 Paintings and
Performance Art Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth
1983 Private Investigations Rochdale
Art Gallery
1982 Perfect Moments Camden
Institute Gallery, London
Perfect
Moments Oriel Gallery, Welsh Arts Council Gallery, Cardiff
Perfect
Moments Spectro Arts Centre Gallery, Newcastle
1980 New Performances
and related Drawings, Wrexham Arts Centre
1979 In Celebration of
the Six Senses, Aberyswtyth Arts Centre
Group
2006 Arteba Buenos
Aires, Argentina
2005 gHOST University
of Hertfordshire
2003 Gallerie Blickensdorf,
Berlin
. Cocktail
II Deluxe Digital
Gallery, Hoxton, London
. Lux
Video Open, RCA, London
2002 Journeys - Two
Artists’ Video Installations Contemporary
Art Museum (CAM) Moscow
. Travelling Elena
Vrublevskaya Gallery, Moscow
(www.vgallery.ru/archivs/travel)
. Digital Prints Zinc,
Birmingham
. Interrogating
The Surface Millbank Gallery
(Royal Military
College), London
. Two Artists Centre
for Attention, London
(www.thecentreofattention.org/exhibitions/marty
www.hibeam.net/fw/fw/19/1531)
. Cocktail Deluxe
Digital Gallery, Hoxton, London
. Digital Prints Zinc
Gallery, Manchester
. Interrogating
The Surface Atkinson Gallery, Millfield
. Art For The
Millennium, New Greenham Arts Centre, Greenham
. Studio Voltaire,
London
. Rich Pics Colville
Place Gallery, London
. The Digital
Aesthetic.Harris Museum, Preston
2001 EVO 1 international
exhibition, L Gallery, Moscow
(www.davidjr.com/evo1/martystjames)
. Artists Prints Inside
Space, London
Printmakers
Council Exhibition at The Royal National Theatre, London
. Rich Picts exhibition
of digital works curated by the Colville
Place Gallery
- New Greenham Arts
. Smoking Man The
Castle Museum, Nottingham
2000 Painting The
Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces
The National
Portrait Gallery, London.
Boy / Girl a
video diptych
(25th Oct
- 4th Feb 2001) with Picasso, Freud, Bacon, Munch, Warhol etc
. Self Portraits Flowers
East Gallery, East London
. Falmouth Arts Centre
- electronic prints
. Art cinema OFF-OFF,
Copenhagen, Denmark
. Centre d’Art,
Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain
. Cine Cafe, Paris
. Batofar, Association
Signe st Eau, Alfortville, France
1999 VIDARTE, Barranca
del Muerto, Mexico
. Transat Video,
Herouville Saint-Clair, France
. RAI SAT, SpA, Rome,
Italy