James Hayes: Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Choice Winner 2020
James Hayes is a graduate of the School of Architecture at University College Dublin and the University of Westminster. James is a painter, illustrator and qualified architect based in the South West of Ireland. James’ work explores our experience of places and addresses a complex relationship of self and surroundings. In this way, through a practice centred around oil painting and pencil drawing, he seeks through his images to make sense of the world around him.
Would you please tell us a little more about your practice?
There is a personal phenomenological inquiry at the core of my work. I’m interested in the way in which our experience of places and the relationships we forge with them exist as an ever evolving, jumbled and reciprocal flow across the material, immaterial and emotional realms. In my opinion, painting has the potential to give a particular complex form to a multitude and simultaneity of overlapping experiences, underlying emotions and inspirations which are at play at any particular moment and place. In this way, I view my works as vehicles for the exploration of many further recurring sub-themes including but not limited to things like masculinity, loneliness, the passage of time, being and belonging, coming to awareness of embodied experience and how landscape can act as protagonist in the emergence of identity and the becoming of self.
My influences are nearly too many to name. I am primarily inspired by places. Often these are places that I've known intimately my whole life which seem to linger in me indefinitely. I'm also heavily influenced by people - artists, writers, film makers, philosophers and in particular Edward Hopper, Edvard Munch, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Juhani Pallasmaa and John McGahern. Also, stories - be they folklore, contemporary, real or imagined - and the act of storytelling in general.
Wander beneath the Sea of Cloud , 2019, oil on canvas, 100 x 76 cm.
What does it mean to you to be awarded the Choice Winner for the Ashurst Emerging Artist prize 2020?
I feel very honoured and grateful to receive this award. It is gratifying to think that the prize was awarded by popular vote and that my piece may have connected with lots of people in a meaningful way, hopefully communicating something real and relatable. On a personal level, it's also nice to have the opportunity to have a solo show in London as I spent a very inspiring and formative period of time living and working there as an architect. It marks a bit of a milestone on the arc of my career to date - to make a return (of sorts) to the city being identified as an emerging artist.
In your opinion, how well does the contemporary art world embrace and support emerging artists?
Social media platforms have been proving to be really helpful tools for artists like myself as a means of disseminating work, of finding and growing an audience, driving innovation and collaboration with others. There are of course also negatives in relation to the impact of social media on the individual and on culture more broadly. However, I believe that because of increasingly fragmented markets and a rise in subscription/membership business models, the viability of artists’ careers and other small independent businesses will continue to rely on their engagement with the latest digital means of communication.
Ultimately as an artist I personally want to be able to share my work as widely, as simply and as cost-effectively as I can, building relationships with people through my work all the while, and right now - social media platforms are the best resource for that.
Reposing, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 81 cm.
How did the pandemic and the months of lockdown impact your practice? What were the challenges that you faced as an artist? How did you adapt?
I think at first it didn't impact the day-to-day nature of my life or my art practice in startling or obvious ways, in that, there's a degree of isolation and focus on my everyday surroundings inherent in the type of work that I make anyway. In spite of this, as months went by it began to challenge me like everybody else due to the sense of contraction of possibilities, the overall inactivity in the world and limits it has placed on personal contact and interaction with others. One of the practical challenges was the extent to which it has hampered physical exhibition opportunities. However, it did nudge me to get a bit more creative in this regard. As a result, I began to tentatively experiment with sound. I worked with collaborators to create original music compositions with specific integrated spoken-word samples and paired them with specific paintings. I suppose I was seeking to stretch the conventional physical and visual experience of the medium of oil on canvas and present my work in a way that would expand an underlying narrative potential or nod to latent notes of literary inspiration.
Surface Tension, 2020, oil on canvas, 90 x 60cm.
Do you have any new projects in progress/any upcoming events?
I have just finished a collaborative project with the musician known as 'Junior Brother'. He has been described as an idiosyncratic, challenging and richly lyrical singer/songwriter whose music is both excitingly forward-looking and anciently evocative. He is a Co. Kerry native, in the south-west of Ireland, - as am I. I was aware that he would cite the atmosphere of this unique landscape, of which we are both so familiar, as his biggest inspiration when writing his music. So, it quickly became clear that there was a bit of a resonance between the preoccupations of his work and my own. We engaged in a sort of 'back-and-forth' process whereby he sent me rough mixes of the record and I spent time absorbing and occupying the music before attempting to visualise the world and landscape imbued therein through my own lens.
Before we say goodbye, do you have any final comments or words of advice for emerging artists?
I think the best piece of advice I might offer with regard to applying to art prizes is most probably the same piece of advice that I would offer with regard to making artwork in general, which would be to just make and submit work that comes from a deeply personal and honest place. It sounds a bit basic or clichéd on the face of it, but I don't think it can be overstated.
Further to that, I would just say - trust your instincts, be rigorous, and be resilient.
Coping, 2019, oil on canvas, 101 x 76cm.