By Steven Frank
Special to Slowcity.ca
Prior to the pandemic, one of the most exciting exhibitions at Oshawa’s Robert McLaughlin Gallery was To the Unseen Future, an exhibition of works by London artist James Kirkpatrick. The exhibition originated at the Judith & Norman ALIX Art Gallery in Sarnia the year before and remains one of the most memorable installs at the RMG, memorable in most part because of the interactive engagement it elicited.
Slow City was there then as Will McGuirk wrote: “Catch the Wave to the Unseen Future at the RMG.” March 4/2019 and is now covering James’ new exhibition opening Sat. Nov. 4th at the James Rottman Fine Art Gallery in Toronto (until Dec. 23rd) – “they never were robots.”
Before we go there we have more to uncover about this genre-bending artistic force of nature. Having recently had the privilege of a tour of his personal collection and his studio, I can attest that James has a work ethic that is only matched by his sense of play. To enter his world is to comprehend the concept of connectivity not only conceptually, but also in regards to relationships. Breaking boundaries between artistic disciplines is central to James as an artist.
The different disciplines that inform his creative process are not part of a strategy with rigorous intent. Think of a tree frog with an expansive canopy where ideas, sounds, shapes materialize and collide. An approach that includes creating interactive, participatory art where you are able to collaborate with sonic sculptures or achieve the next level in a video game or decipher his visual language where human forms resemble faces or machines, with the resulting interpretations left up to you the viewer.
Not unlike the anthropomorphic forms in a Philip Guston painting, Kirkpatrick’s ‘characters’, whether in a painting, drawing or sculpture, consistently feel to be in a state of becoming, full of possibilities, an antidote to the finite, whereas Guston’s appear severely worn down by external forces. This amorphousness succeeds in his newest body of work as James ponders a future where our humanity is blurred by our relationship and reliance on technology. As we cross the threshold into the world of A.I., grasping our devices, we need to question whether we are the masters of it or may it be the other way around?
Like the many artists in New York in the early 1980’s that transitioned from brick walls to East Village gallery halls, James is never far from his formative years as a graffiti artist, a practice he still takes part in with mural collectives, one that has also worked with events organized by Chad Tyson in Oshawa. While studying at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, James left his mark literally, usually closer to the train tracks than to the shoreline.
With a DIY ethos similar to the punk artists of the late 70s and early 80s, James along with many other London artists had exhibitions in London (2011-2013) where they were referred to as the New Regionalists. Described as “a motley collection of artists who, like the London artists of yore, embraced a bizarre and exciting collection of influences from art and counterculture in their work.”*
Movies, zines, comics, and graffiti are just a few of the inspirations that inform their work - in other words, their art is animated by the things they love in life. This isn’t that different than the approach of their forebears - the original Regionalist artists that taught many of them at Beal Secondary School: Greg Curnoe, Murray Favro and Jack Chambers. Something else that these groups have in common is in their affinity to music, as some of the original artists, who made many of their own instruments as well, were part of the Nihilist Spasm Band. This collective is still revered by noise music aficionados the world over. Sonic Youth has even done dates with them including a gig at the Kool Haus in Toronto in 2002.
A true multi-media artist, as well as a surfer, James is at home with a paint brush, circuit board or two turntables and a microphone, using one of the core tenets of hip-hop culture – collage, not just as a method of pasting, but in his colliding disciplines and genres. And yes he is also a rapper aka Thesis Sahib touring internationally and releasing music and videos under his pseudonym and as AWARDS with a collaborator in France known as Funken. As a one-man performer, James is as unique as Hamilton’s B.A. Johnston, albeit with less excretory and Ti-Cat references, but teamed with Funken there is a surfeit of new wave influences at play. Using beats they both explore popular culture and human idiosyncrasies without missing a beat taking on everything from dinosaur bones to warm computers and teaming up with French school children musically and visually.
Within the world of hip-hop, respect is the dominant and colourblind currency. In the catalogue for the RMG and the exhibition in Sarnia*, Canadian rapper, and fellow Londoner, Shadrach Kabango (SHAD) writes: “James’ growing reputation as a visual artist, combined with a significant achievement and network in the world of underground hip hop, elevated him to a unique level of esteem for us in the local rap scene. More than a great rapper or a great visual artist, Thesis became for us the quintessential artist’s artist: multi-disciplinary, playful, fearless… I love that his work is reflective of the difficult to describe place and time we come from: a Digital/Analog, Gen X/Millennial, Downtown/Suburban, Pop/Art mash-up of disparate cultural influences that makes all the sense in the world to us.”**
James’ interactive pieces best demonstrate his love of hip hop and art. The work that came out of his residency at Banff Centre of Arts and Creativity, and expanded upon later, could best be described as Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets Grandmaster Flash and Kraftwerk.
His approach to boundary breaking helped him and Jesse Jacobs become the creative minds behind the video game SPINCH for Nintendo Switch. To play SPINCH is a way to get a glimpse inside the mind of James Kirkpatrick. A colourful world where anything seems possible, but one must be hyper alert and have stamina to navigate a constant stream of incoming stimuli, not all of which are benevolent - yes there are obstacles to overcome, but also solutions and rewards. Move fast or you may be eaten.
James Kirkpatrick/Thesis Sahib deliver a much needed prescription - in that the holistic effects of art and music play a vital role in maintaining our humanity. Our ability to survive, at least from a mental health point of view, may be incumbent on our ability to find the balance where we can engage with technology without being consumed by it.
More James Kirkpatrick at www.jameskirkpatrick.org
* London 150 Culture Moments, Vanessa Brown & Jason Dickson,
Biblioasis, Windsor, 2017
** To the Unseen Future, James Kirkpatrick,
Judith & Norman ALIX Gallery, Sarnia, 2020
Note: This article has been heavily edited on Nov 7 2023 from the original published Nov 2 2023.