James Bryant

MA Photography – Central Saint Martins, 2019

James is multi-disciplinary artist working in London. He uses new technologies, performance, photography, net art, and site-specific installations to unpick the entanglement of mechanical image making and personal and social patterns of thought. His practice is informed by conceptual art and new media works.

James considers that we are intrinsically connected with the forms of media we consume and participate in. He is interested in how the figurative and realistic image informs the way we think, and how the feedback loop of image production and consumption can be understood. He is influenced by daily lived experience, including his own thoughts, dreams, and conversations. His work exudes a subtle feeling of anxiety although having no rational terms in which to ground it.

His practice takes the form of research through material process and experimentation, to see what effect different areas of image consumption and participation have on the viewer. It is a process of juxtaposing the intangible with the tangible, the virtual with the actual, in an effort to discover the fault lines through which our lives gravitate.

James uses a variety of media in conjunction with each other, including live stream video and audio transmission. In doing so, he creates a link through virtual and actual spaces and a direct involvement of the public sphere.

 

Although often seeming to critique developments in technology, there is a softness in his approach that expresses respect for new modes of being; this creates nuanced and complex interpretations.

Awards and residencies:

Open Mouth Student Film Festival, London, July 2019; commissioned to show work at Arthouses, Whitley Bay, August 2019; commissioned by the University of the Arts London’s Student’s Union to show work in September 2019 at the CSM Welcome Fair.

Instagram: @_james_bryant

 

“I like to use an unrestricted approach and embrace new media that are embedded in the way I live. In particular, net art and live stream imagery have an intangibility and process-driven nature that constitutes a perpetual and perceptual state of change. They seem to resist the stativity of a traditional photographic image and invite a direct interaction with the audience, although, as data, their trace will remain in perpetuity.”

 

 

Browse James' Work