James Lomax at Lily Brooke

Artist: James Lomax

Exhibition title: Details form the difference

Venue: Lily Brooke, London, UK

Date: February 21 – March 27, 2018

Photography: All photographs courtesy the artist and Lily Brooke, London

Building on a physical framework, for this new body of work James Lomax has constructed an installation of wall based work and sculpture. As an exploration of materials and processes, he works quickly and aggressively, offering a gesture, a mark or the remnants of something that was there before.

Through his practice Lomax is testing materials and alienating their processes. Each installation, or body of work, comes from a place; be that a memory or a physical location. This often begins through walking, documentation and an extensive archive of photographs. A colour palette is considered and selected through the materials’ natural existence whilst form and physicality is often dictated by a material’s capabilities.

Lomax reinterprets these domestic materials. Often found on construction sites, cement, bathroom silicone, OSB and adhesives have been repurposed to produce a fragile installation. The situation of unease created is directly related to the vulnerability of the materials as the destruction enfolds throughout. Though there is a parallel between the materials used and the methods of making the resulting work holds no association to its primary use.

The work stems from a body of research made over the course of two recent residencies. Lomax took particular interest in a former industrial area in Birmingham, now largely cleared to create brownfield sites for development, these areas bare small but significant marks and gestures towards its manufacturing past. The destruction of these buildings reveal their foundations and floors, tracing the movements of industry over the past century.

The circular process of creation ensures the construction of each piece is reliant on the deconstruction of either itself or another piece in the installation. Serving as the cornerstone, the chaotic destruction is imperative to its existence.