I SEE International Video Art Festival 国 际 艺 术 影 像 节
James P. Graham
James P. Graham has been working full-time as an artist for 10 years, most notably in film, photography, drawing and sculpture. He is autodidactic, having left Eton College at 18. He began his career in photography while working in Paris, and transitioned to TV and cinema when he left for London in 1994. Within this period he completed international commissions in editorial and advertising photography as well as television commercials. His decision to pursue a career as a fine artist followed a two-year sabbatical, during which he refused all commercial work in order to concentrate on creating his first purposeful artworks in 2002-3. These were screen-based, experimental film works using Super 8 film and framed within a landscape of “metaphysical and ontological significance.”
Having trained traditionally in photography and filmmaking, Graham particularly enjoys the interface between analogue processes and high-end technology. By mainly using landscape and nature, his work often references the now disused term scientia sacra, permeating chosen locations and objects with a metaphysical and ontological significance. As well as interpreting and re-creating notions of “sacred space,” his work is infused with ideas that derive from intuitive and ritualistic sources. The results can be enticingly intangible, and in some cases, totally immersive. Graham cites two fundamental factors in his work: first, intuition, or the catalyst behind the creation of every artwork, and second, resonance, or the result of the work as expressed through the viewer.