Rising Stars: Meet James Gilbert

Today we’d like to introduce you to James Gilbert.

James, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have a multidisciplinary art practice that includes sculpture, installation, drawing, video and performance. I often make work in large repetitive quantities because duplicating the process with slight variations often reveals an unexpected diversity of results. It resembles an anthropological study: from the largest cross-section of ideas with an appreciation of our collective history. Then, I start asking questions like how can I re-present historical and contemporary issues? What materials best suggest these ideas? What form can I use to examine these narratives? Currently, with the abundance of mash-ups, fake news, and half-truths circulating, as a culture we can’t sort and evaluate the information we see fast enough to understand it. In response, I began researching archeological and archetypal symbols. While the stories guide us, the ancestral truths and connective longevity from our ancestors, the great migration and the age of exploration (the title of the most recent series), tell us tales of life, death, love, friendship, war, peace, sex and freedom.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I like to always have an idea in play. You have to be curious and interested in what is around you, what stories affect you. There has to be a reason for my work to exist. While I am confident with what I make, finding the right balance of aesthetics, mindfulness, meaning and humor is important to me. I worry about it everyday. It has a strange way of being able to break your heart.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I have a diverse studio practice that works between several mediums. I favor raw materials such as wood, industrial plastic sheeting, fabric and plaster for the purity of their metaphorical meaning. For example, wood connotes time, aging and rejuvenation, whereas plastic might be seen as fake and manufactured. I deliberately engage labor-intensive hand tools, which make the marks by my hand more evident. Every work carries the natural blemish of the materials and highlights intentional imperfections visible in joinery. It gives away who we are: flawed and imperfect, which always becomes a feature of the work. I think I provide a witty take on confounding topics.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Fortitude.

Contact Info:

• Email: james@jamesgilbertstudio.com
• Website: www.jamesgilbertstudio.com
• Instagram: jamesgilbertstudio

Image Credits:
James Gilbert portrait courtesy Sara Adami all other images courtesy James Gilbert