Upside Down World - Hong Kong

• Main Author: St James, Marty
• Other Authors: School of Creative Arts, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Art and Design, Research into Practice
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Drawings; Photography; Video Art; Exhibition; The Gallery; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2299/20042; http://www.martystjames.com

Upside Down World comprises a suite of photographs and drawings supplemented by additional drawing made 'live' on location in a gallery setting. Based on the form of a mandala, the rapidly made images aim to create a temporal snapshot of a location. The suite of images was shown at the Blink Gallery, Hong Kong between 27th September - 12th October 2014. The works take as their theme a set of ecological imperatives and the multiform ways in which they can be seen, the aim to form a new kind of visual metaphor. International UK artist Marty St.James presented his unique artworks at the Blink Gallery in Hong Kong. Having recently returned from his second artist’s residency at the bottom of the world in Antarctica (march 2014) the artist showed new drawings, photographs and made a drawing installation ‘live’ in the gallery. These ecological driven art works are based on the notion that there are many ways to see the world and locate our environment. The intention is build a visual metaphor to indicate how things can look if we re-position ourselves for just a short space and time. We are under threat from ourselves. The way we see the world, the way we see our environment, the way we teach and what we teach needs adjustment. These new artworks based on the notion of mandalas explore the notion visually that our politics, economic systems and ways of seeing are quite literally upside down, back to front and and sending us in circles. It is no longer a flat earth that we see and fear falling from. Its an upside down world, where our seeing and understanding has been distorted by economic politics which cause us not to see the ‘wood for trees’. Leonardo De Vinci wrote backwards in a world that has developed a ‘rational’ to communicate only forwards. Translating the world as picture, as image upside down may yet enable new thinking and new visions about our environment, about our world. Marty St James © 2014 ‘The intimate, human-focus of St James’ art can be interpreted as a theoretical reflection of the contemporary ...