01/02

James likes jazz. Reading the structures at play in his work is like following the melody in a piece by Charles Mingus or Miles Davis at their abstract best. Meandering, non linear, the concern not for a single central narrative or melody but a path negotiated through tenuously connected reference points and snap shots of other forms. Hip-hop treads a similar tight rope, wrapping up disconnected cuts and disjointed samples, pastes and loops all hung on the MC’s own unique thread of logic. James has followed similar processes in his own design approach, never lingering too long in one place, ever erratic and eclectic, from early experiments with consciously disconcerting and unbalanced shapes, mixed forms and counterposed materials, to the penchant for an obstinate trip-hazard chair leg and jarring construction detail. Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1886 polemic essay Beyond good and evil proposes that, to be truly “Modern”, man must disregard absolutist ideals of good and bad, and develop “a tongue and taste for everything”. In the age of the post post-Modern, post revivalist Modern, post commercialism, post boom and bust, and in the absence of any grand defining design philosophy or universal narrative, James seems happy to play in the spaces in between. With references to Donald Judd, Industrial Americana, High Georgian Classicism, Japanese joinery, Italian couture fashion, workwear, counterpoint and juxtaposition. The spiral of James’s attention to detail has grown tighter as the breadth of his reference material has become wider and more varied. Confident with such ambivalence, in design just at the edge of comprehensibility, communicating in hints and glimpses in knowing nods to classics, movements, genres and archetypes, all mixed up and seamlessly reconstituted. Freeform stylings with a reassuringly solid back beat.