EXHIBITIONS / ZERO EXPECTATIONS

31.03.2011 to 23.04.2011

Ford's first show in Australia has an appropriately ironic title, adapted from a well known quote by Stephen Hawking. In this context it is relevant to the lo-fi aesthetic of the works and the use of mathematical/scientific iconography. The exhibition is peppered with never ending knots, word play and a sense of redeemable idiocy.

The artist's interest in visual, verbal and conceptual forms of repetition and patterns is evident in his new series of drawings, Tongue Tied and Tired. Aural, alliterative pairings and sequences are transformed to visual forms by laboured textual rendering. The act of writing lines as a punishment is given a new purpose - the words form intertwined threads, flowing into the shapes of imaginary knots that loop on infinitely. Ford takes Escher's famous trefoil knot as a starting point and moves onto to more complex, theoretical knotted shapes. There is a metaphorical tying of the tongue and a visual tying of the knot. In addition to these drawings there is a sculptural work that can be found flopped and twisted on the floor of the gallery - the first in the Snake Pis series. In a universe according to Hawking and Feynman, where particles pop in and out of existence, taking on random forms, the likelihood of a stuffed snake appearing, curled into the shape of Pi, is a likely as anything else. And, as Ford states, "there are not enough snakes in contemporary art". The Snake Pi in this show is concerned with length, one of the three physical dimensions; others in the series will consider mass and time.

James R Ford is a British artist currently living in Wellington, NZ. Ford studied at Goldsmiths, London, and has exhibited and been published internationally.

Click an image to view an enlargement