Reference: BEATHAM015
Title: Machine Through Which to Divine the Hidden Communications of Animals in the Dark
Date: 2021
Author: James Beatham
Details: Commissioned for the 2021 NOVA X Exhibition
Media: Pit Fired Ceramic Installation
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: The artworks described in literary science-fiction are an important reference point for my practice. This fictional space allows for a reframing of what can be accepted as real, feasible or functional. That fiction can describe artworks that cannot physically exist, to me doesn’t undermine their value or credibility as artworks. Many other worlds present similar alternate logics, such as the afterlife or utopias, all of which present different possibilities. Machine Through Which to Divine the Hidden Communications of Animals in the Dark plays with scale and recognisable narrative elements to continue this line of enquiry and aims to question how craft and form can become regarded as functional parts, in a utilitarian sense, once the object presents itself as existing within some kind of fictional narrative structure.

Reference: BEATHAM001
Title: Untitled Pot
Date: 2020
Author: James Beatham
Details: NA
Media: Ceramic
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: The sculpture and pot are shrines or machines with an esoteric functionality that emerges from the assemblage. The main difference between them is that one depicts this idea, the other is a 3D rendering of it. While science fiction novels use language to describe impossible artworks, I am using form.

Reference: BEATHAM002
Title: Untitled Fountain
Date: 2021
Author: James Beatham
Details: NA
Media: Ceramic
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: Fountains are interesting to me because of the inclusion of moving water. That evolution and physical processes might be regarded as forms of thinking implies information in the smallest elements of these processes. The movement of water acts as an activation to the sculpture, which is always becoming-with the water.

Reference: BEATHAM003
Title: Model of Butchers at Work
Date: 1980-1900BC
Author: Unknown
Details: NA
Media: Wooden model
Credit: meisterdrucke.uk/model-of-butchers-at-work

Description: These artefacts and objects that have stuck with me and influenced my practice. A common thread between most of them is craft and form having a functional value and the objects having a significance that asks for a belief to make it function. I think these objects highlight the importance of belief in the creation of meaning in the world.

Reference: BEATHAM004
Title: Inuksuit
Date: Unknown
Author: Unknown
Details: A manmade stone landmark or cairn built for use by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America.
Media: Sculpture
Credit: wikipedia.org/Inuksuk

Description: These artefacts and objects that have stuck with me and influenced my practice. A common thread between most of them is craft and form having a functional value and the objects having a significance that asks for a belief to make it function. I think these objects highlight the importance of belief in the creation of meaning in the world.

Reference: BEATHAM011
Title: I Always Keep a Sketchbook With Me
Date: NA
Author: James Beatham
Details: Artist Sketchbook
Media: Stationary
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: I always keep a sketchbook with me to draw and write ideas in. These sketches and notes then form the basis of the artworks I go on to make.

Reference: BEATHAM005
Title: Mighty Max Skull Dungeon Doom Zone Play Set
Date: 1992
Author: Bluebird
Details: NA
Media: Plastic toys
Credit: wikipedia.org/MightyMax(toyline)

Description: These artefacts and objects that have stuck with me and influenced my practice. A common thread between most of them is craft and form having a functional value and the objects having a significance that asks for a belief to make it function. I think these objects highlight the importance of belief in the creation of meaning in the world.

Reference: BEATHAM006
Title: Reliquary Shrine [de Touyl]
Date: 1328
Author: Jean de Toul
Details: Reliquary Shrine made from enamel, gilt-silver and paint. Located at the The Cloisters, New York
Media: Sculpture
Credit: wikipedia.org/ReliquaryShrine(de_Touyl)

Description: These artefacts and objects that have stuck with me and influenced my practice. A common thread between most of them is craft and form having a functional value and the objects having a significance that asks for a belief to make it function. I think these objects highlight the importance of belief in the creation of meaning in the world.

Reference: BEATHAM007
Title: Roadside Shrine
Date: Unknown
Author: Unknown
Details: NA
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Description: These artefacts and objects that have stuck with me and influenced my practice. A common thread between most of them is craft and form having a functional value and the objects having a significance that asks for a belief to make it function. I think these objects highlight the importance of belief in the creation of meaning in the world.

Reference: BEATHAM008
Title: Neuromancer
Date: 1984
Author: William Gibson
Details: A science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre. Set in the future, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up hacker hired for one last job, which brings him up against a powerful artificial intelligence.
Media: Publication
Credit: wikipedia.org/Neuromancer

Description: Science fiction books have been a big influence on my work. The parameters of the worlds define an internal logic that creates space in which all kinds of impossible things can occur in a believable way. These worlds allow magic, alternate technologies, dystopian regimes, all of which then influence what you find within the world. The artworks do not need to be feasible in their construction or design: the separation from practicality opens all sorts of possibilities for art, and never being completed doesn’t take away their power. From here I started to weave incompleteness and fantasy into my art as a medium in itself.

Reference: BEATHAM009
Title: Going Public
Date: 2012
Author: Boris Groys
Details: In Going Public, Boris Groys looks to escape entrenched aesthetic and sociological understandings of art—which always assume the position of the spectator, of the consumer.
Media: Publication
Credit: e-flux.com/going-public

Description: Science fiction books have been a big influence on my work. The parameters of the worlds define an internal logic that creates space in which all kinds of impossible things can occur in a believable way. These worlds allow magic, alternate technologies, dystopian regimes, all of which then influence what you find within the world. The artworks do not need to be feasible in their construction or design: the separation from practicality opens all sorts of possibilities for art, and never being completed doesn’t take away their power. From here I started to weave incompleteness and fantasy into my art as a medium in itself.

Reference: BEATHAM010
Title: Childhood’s End
Date: 1953
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Details: The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Media: Publication
Credit: wikipedia.org/Childhoods_End

Description: Science fiction books have been a big influence on my work. The parameters of the worlds define an internal logic that creates space in which all kinds of impossible things can occur in a believable way. These worlds allow magic, alternate technologies, dystopian regimes, all of which then influence what you find within the world. The artworks do not need to be feasible in their construction or design: the separation from practicality opens all sorts of possibilities for art, and never being completed doesn’t take away their power. From here I started to weave incompleteness and fantasy into my art as a medium in itself.

Reference: BEATHAM012
Title: The Garden of Earthly Delights
Date: 1490-1510
Author: Hieronymus Bosch
Details: As little is known of Bosch's life or intentions, interpretations of his intent range from an admonition of worldly fleshy indulgence, to a dire warning on the perils of life's temptations, to an evocation of ultimate sexual joy.
Media: Painting
Credit: wikipedia.orgThe_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights

Description: This painting has always fascinated me. It’s so full of life and various stories that you can get lost in it imagining all the possibilities of what it is that you’re actually seeing depicted. The content also strikes me as being so much stranger than a lot of the artworks I have seen from the same time period, which only amplifies its apparent oddness. 

Reference: BEATHAM013
Title: Odalisque with a Turkish Chair
Date: 1928
Author: Henri Matisse
Details: With her elbow resting on an armchair, her head resting nonchalantly in her hand, the young woman, her eyes fixed in the distance, has abandoned the checkerboard placed at her side.
Media: Painting
Credit: wikipedia.org/Henri_Matisse

Description: I really like the use of pattern and the way the perspective is presented in this painting. Particularly the chessboard in the bottom left, which states its position quite plainly, versus the flatness and confusing angles and sizes of the other patterns in juxtaposition with one another.