Selected essays, Interviews & reviews
50 robot essay, exhibit gallery, london
“I spent my whole youth building imaginary universes with children’s building blocks”. James Johnson-Perkins
James Johnson-Perkins (born Dover, 1972) has tirelessly explored the media of children toys and produced a remarkably varied body of work, including playfully digitalized images, nostalgic computer graphics prints, gestural and chromatic abstractions and chart grid model. In November EXHIBIT at Golden Lane Estate presents “50 Robots”, a major solo show by British artist James Johnson-Perkins comprising of three new bodies of works. On the ground gallery space, Johnson-Perkins will display 50 new pieces of robot sculptures and furniture especially developed for EXHIBIT. These are composed by Megablock’s 2,800 construction bricks. For the basement installation, he has created two video projections using 8-bit computer graphics that beautifully explore the binary information shaped by animated geometric shapes. Alongside the video, akin to a three dimensional structuralism painting, is the third collection of work made up of a series of new paintings and megablock structures which, coincidently share the vision of Sarah Sze and Malevich, are essentially exploring spatial dynamics, colour relationship and geometry.
“50 Robots” is a continuation of Johnson-Perkins’ sculptural project developed since 2002. A close inspection on Johnson-Perkin’s megablock chart grid structure reveals the proximity and representation of the Swiss artist Paul Klee, especially with his work “Ancient Sound. Abstract on Black” (1925), which is characterized by “a rhythmic structure of squares and rectangles, assembled in a single musical movement in accordance with some visible law’ (Grohmann, W. 1967, p.102). Additionally Johnson-Perkins’ colorful megablock structures with these bright chromatic geometry adeptly arranged in a grid formation has created a remarkably stunning sheet of kaleidoscopic colour that transcends his favorite 80’s music into a visible form.
Johnson-Perkins’s oeuvre can be described as a nostalgia trip. His robots are in different sizes, colors and characters, which have powerful relationships between them. This new body of work concurs with the 1960’s Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans presentation but in addition Johnson-Perkins creates the attraction and curiosity of involving the viewer to discover the particularity amongst individual robot and take us on a journey that invites the audience to have a direct dialogue with different aspect of the artist’s psyche.
September 2008
50 Robots article, Camilla Canocchi, City University London
Constructed with Mega Blocks bricks, 50 medium size robots are the new creations by the 36 years old Newcastle-based artist, who is showcasing them at Exhibit at Golden Lane gallery until the 20 of December. Entitled “50 Robots” the exhibition also features a video work of alternating geometric shapes and bright colours.
“This one with a hole in the stomach”, says James Johnson-Perkins indicating one of his robots standing on a shelf on the wall, “well, I made this one when I was not feeling so good.” Playful and coloured, James Johnson-Perkins art investigate his moods, artistic influences and teenage reminiscences, bringing his audience back to the Eighties.
“I think young artists who grew up in the Eighties are rediscovering their childhood again”, says James Johnson-Perkins, whose career has started back in 1997, when he showcased his first solo exhibition at Margate Library Gallery in Kent.
Since then, James Johnson-Perkins has spread his 1980s nostalgia all around the world, counting exhibitions in Bangkok, New York and Moscow among many other cities.
Alan Lam, curator of the exhibition says: “I think James current work reveals his own universe about his nostalgic childhood memory and communicates with the viewer through these iconic robots and or palettes of colour. The scale is very intimate and the message is confined. His works are more intricate than simply copying a DC comic hero, a building or a city.”
His obsession about child play is continuing, as he says: “I am presently creating dinosaurs out of Action Men and Barbie dolls. Dinosaurs like robots have an immediate fascination for me. I used to be captivated by science fiction and I remember being terrified by the film Dr Who and the dinosaurs. I had to leave the theatre in tears.”
December 2008
50 Robots review, Kate Weir, Spoonfed
From Futurama's Bender to Transformers, Cybermen and Wall-E, robots are right up there with zombies, ninjas and pirates as retro memes that are regurgitated by gen-X culture mongers, looking to connect with the ironic youth and placate their rabid nostalgia, until they over-saturate the zeitgeist and aren't fun anymore. Still, in spite of this, robots kick ass, and until they become super intelligent and enslave us all, their diverse stylistics make them great subjects for artists; providing an aesthetic that is both modern and retro, clunky and sleek and a nifty metaphor for societal downfall, as demonstrated by H. R. Giger's sophisticated robots and Eric Joyner's adorable,'Rock em' Sock em' creatures. Hell, robots can even produce paintings of their own, so their link with fine art is well established (even if their paintings suck...) and thus they now have an exhibition dedicated entirely to them.
Much like Daft Punk and the Beastie Boys, James Johnson Perkins has hit upon the winning formula for 'awesome', taking robots and 80s music and mashing them together with the glue of childhood memories – Megablox (Lego's less cool cousin) - to form 50 Robots at Exhibit. The exhibition is on two floors and features a collection of various small robots sculpted out of the eponymous blocky stuff. Each critter is a different colour and style, hanging out of custom-made mega blocks display cases, strewn across the floor and even hiding in Exhibit's ancient (and extremely narrow), 1950's spiral staircase. They are cute, colourful and cartoony, each one a little character in itself. The exhibition is whimsical and naive, yet trendy enough to appeal to Japanese vinyl toy collectors and hipsters alike. Perkin's has also provided some Megablox tables (perhaps he had some blox left over) to further investigate the spatial connections between objects.
December 2008
interview with james johnson-jerkins by andrew quinn
Saturday 28th June 2008
Worthing Street, Hull, UK
AQ : Thematically in the broadest sense, what's your work about...
JJ-P : There's definite themes and influences in my work… My recent work is influenced by my relationship to childhood nostalgia, particularly the 80s. Choosing materials that are poignant - like Lego, 80s television programmes, 80s films and the themes within those... I recently had a film made for me, of Knightrider - but it’s made from ASCII characters, which look like Teletext...
AQ : [agreeing]
JJ-P : It's also saturated so it looks like it's just made out of eight colours...
AQ : ...It's also the same palette physically as a ZX Spectrum computer display
JJ-P : It's very close to this. I also made a film before that, which was... the A-Team using ZX Spectrum graphics. So I'm trying to use a subject matter that relates time-wise to the theme of the television programme that I'm using... there's also whole lot of references to computer games and the names of computer games in my work. I make these floor pieces and call them things like Jet Set Willy...
AQ :Yes
JJ-P : And the word pieces make references to other 80’s things... like Tron... or.... songs like... Blue Monday, a New Order song. The next thing I want to use is Action Men... I can see the Action Men in the same space as the robots...Up until now I have been making robots out of Lego... I suppose we grew up in a generation where ... there was a lot of science fiction...
AQ : And science fiction cartoons as well...Like Transformers... and other kids TV programmes with a character which would have a pet robot assistant...
JJ-P : Yes...there was. Twiki... from Buck Rogers and a robot in The Black Hole and Battlestar Galactica.
AQ :Yes.
JJ-P : ... I also do a performance work called John Peel where I wear a mask and become a robot myself - I DJ as this robot, play 80s music and I do robotics...
JJ-P : So in my exhibitions there's lots of different things happening simultaneously… there’s music, things to look at...and things that move… like my geometric and robot animations... One of the things I've really enjoyed in my practice and in other people's work is when it is playful and skews boundaries of how we would normally see or present something… you know, for example, Wolfgang Tillmans, when he puts his photographs onto the wall they are in very different places... like posters... and sometimes the edges a poster are ripped or slightly skewed, so you view them in a very different way to the standard idea of framed works which are hung at the same level…for me now, when I have an exhibition, there’s no definitive way of how things will to be shown, it's like an experiment...
AQ : ... as long as there's enough... space to interact with it...
JJ-P : Because of the way that I work, I'm not precious about that. I guess what I'm trying to say is - if someone wants to come in and break a piece off, I'd be quite happy to patch it in a different way...
AQ : If a child comes in and picks up one of the things and runs round and puts it down somewhere... then...
JJ-P :... well yes, to a point... that’s OK.
AQ : [laughs]
JJ-P : So in essence I like to think that people will relate to what I do in a very childlike way…a lot of people have actually brought this up…my exhibitions are like a…
AQ : ... a children's playroom?
JJ-P :...yes, so it doesn’t matter if the robots are nicely composed in the middle of the room. What actually matters is that there's a mass of things that people get a sensation that triggers particular thoughts of their own childhood or they might be reminded of playing games with their own children...I end up having lots of conversations with grown men and women about... when they were... ten...I think everyone enjoys a nostalgia trip...
AQ : Yes when I went to university for instance…one pub conversation that was guaranteed to get everybody involved was to be talking about... 1980s television programmes or something... it was a conversation everyone could engage with... and enjoy... remembering the theme tunes and what the characters were called.
JJ-P :... yes, 'cause it triggers an emotive response of a time where... possibly you they happy. [both laugh]
JJ-P :...well they were not burdened by responsibility, well, not everyone is... When I was thirteen years old, I went to a youth club and we used to watch the A-Team on the TV and play ping-pong and it would be... really fun...I end up telling similar stories at art galleries with people who are used to spending time talking seriously about art.. I end up going to these places to show work and listening to curators... like a counsellor… about their childhood experiences...
AQ : [laughs]
JJ-P : I meet these important art people and we end up sitting on the floor, surrounded by loads of Lego bricks, talking about Action Men and Cindy or Madonna. [both laugh]
JJ-P : I also relate my work to the history of art e.g. pop-art and architecture and quite serious things but at the same time I also like to just...play…There's of an interesting dichotomy between those two things. You know Picasso was very much interested in making art as a child would... I think this notion is really important. I’m also fascinated with the mythology behind stories of childhood…my favourite is He-Man. He-Man is the master of the universe, has a magic sword and he can turn a cat... into…a battle cat. He's fighting against Skeletor, who... is Death... you know he's got a skull for a face.
AQ : ... and a black hood...
JJ-P : You know, this is telling children, symbolically, that they have to be really strong, believe in magic. To avoid death... when I look at children's stories now I think, well, they're a bit crazy, and to think we grew up with all these... and... I wonder how does that affect us as adults when we reinterpret these tales? In some ways the stories are not necessarily a bad thing, teaching children to believe in magic. But in other ways, we live in a culture where there are wars, and maybe these stories have programmed in us into a sort of acceptance, you know... with good guys fighting the bad guys and then...
AQ :…if they win, they're the hero...
JJ-P : ...yes, and the politicians happily tell us that we're fighting against the bad guys and that makes you feel alright about it, 'cause we're like He-Man and we're all on the side of the good, but it's not that simple...
AQ : ...did anyone ever ask Skeletor if he had a difficult childhood... you know... Did he get bullied for having a skull for a face...[both laugh]
JJ-P : ... but there are good stories too like Star Wars… the great thing in Star Wars, is the bad guy, Darth Vader…has got a good side too…
AQ : ... it's less simple than just saying 'he's a baddie, he's just a baddie'...
JJ-P : ... yes... it's not so black and white... that's why I like it. I think I'm not specifically trying to address those types of things within my work, but I think that with my robots, they're different sizes, have guns and some of them are bigger and smaller, and there’s power ratios between them and I sort of see them as having an essence of these stories and...
AQ : ... character...
JJ-P : ... yes they're different characters, some of them are women, some of them are men, some of them have got two heads – and I use my own symbolic language. If one’s got two heads it means something very different to one with a hole in its body... These qualities also relate to sculpture in different cultures and times.
AQ : So is there particular model of the robots which is yourself.
JJ-P : ... They're all me. They're all just aspects of my psyche... well, one of them might be me, but I wouldn't tell you which one... [both laugh]
AQ : ...it's the one wearing the dress, with the wings...
JJ-P : ... well, if you want to look at them like little fetishes... then... you don't want to give away your secret robot, do you...
AQ : ... yes... [laughs]
JJ-P : ...I don't want to have someone come along and do voodoo on it. [both laugh]
AQ : how did you relate or treat your Lego when you were playing with it for the first time as a child?
JJP : The reason I chose Lego initially as an artist, to make sculpture, Is, it's the most basic material. I suppose what's nice about Lego bricks and with drawing too, is there are no boundaries - you can draw what you want, and you can imagine things up. Also I’m probably living out a fantasy... that I probably would have liked to have fulfilled as a kid, but never had enough Lego... [both laugh]
JJP : As a child I remember building these tiny little spaceships and we built...
AQ : ... them out of three bricks, so you could make a full fleet of them...
JJP : ... yes, so we'd have a hundred of them, and it was so good having so many...
AQ : I remember, strangely my own Lego playing, I’d make something that my parents we're really proud of and I've got these in a photo album.
JJP : You've got some photos of these?
AQ : Yes... amongst those I've got pictures of some Lego models I made when I was four or six or ten...
JJP : Aww... that's lovely... I'd have liked that...
AQ : But what's funny, is there's no record of any of the drawings or paintings... just the Lego. So the ones that were really good would stay on this little shelf in the bedroom as it was 'finished'... until, I needed the bricks again… for a while I would try and keep it, keep it there as “I'd made this beautiful ornament” and put it on a shelf for... two days... and then go “ohh... I need one of those flat four bricks off it”...
JJP : That’s similar to what I do now... but I don't need to break them down... and these things have become artworks...
AQ : …and you can keep them forever and just get more bricks.
JJP : But what's different about what I do now is I’m playing around with... a whole sort of schematic... of art and the history of art …and lot of artists I am interested in are using similar nostalgic references,like Mark Wallinger’s silver Tardis or Jim Lambie's floor pieces, which are very 80’s.
AQ : Where will your work develop onwards... from...the 80's. In ten years time will you start looking at... nineties nostalgia from when you were in your late teens or early twenties...
JJP : ... I don't know whether I'll stick to the eighties or go into the nineties…but I can definitely see myself over the next ten years making five hundred robots... so there's even more of a critical mass… I can imagine huge spaces just totally filled with them... I can also see myself making more of the video works based on eighties programmes, so I could go on for the rest of my career exploring the eighties, or exploring childhood and using these particular materials.
Andrew Quinn is a director of Red Gallery, Hull, UK
Manic Minor by Philip Wincolmlee-Barnes
Robot Dreams was the Red Gallery's summer exhibition. Newcastle artist James Johnson-Perkins staged a thematically consistent show. I met him briefly at the opening and I gauged him to be a relatively young.
This would explain his enthusiasm for growing up with 1980's paraphernalia - home computers, such as the Atari and the ZX81, Lego bricks, and American TV action shows such as 'Knight Rider'. All of which were fed into 'Robot Dreams'; with Lego bricks in particular being his prime medium in this and in other exhibitions of his.
It was very 'boys and their toys' territory. In the first room one encountered a Lego model of a robot character - a kind of totemic figure or, possibly, a species of 'imaginary friend'. In room two we watched the robot perform silent dance routines, in blocky retro graphics, on a monitor. On Johnson-Perkins' web site these gymnastic vignettes are performed to quirky pop music pertaining to the era.
In the third and final room was a large scale projection of a favourite episode of 'Knight Rider', digitised - perhaps as seen through a robot's eyes (if, properly speaking, they have any) - into cascading swathes of numbers, letters and keyboard characters. As an artist he is playing a different, much more self-aware kind of game – a 'cat-and-mouse' routine between the artist and his audience. And artists are frequently accused of merely 'mucking about'. Robot Dreams cheekily (and knowingly) seems to confirm this. But, personally, as a devotee of dawdling and daydreaming, I enjoyed the brash irreverence of these exuberant displays, which have an equally knowing nod towards the Pop Art of yesterday ('trashy' materials, obsessions with media phenomenon, etc).
I also remember the 1980's. Thus the boyish motifs in the exhibition did, for good or for ill, resonate with me. Those frustrated and foolishly frittered away afternoons trying to complete platform computer games such as: 'Manic Miner' and 'Jet Set Willy'. And adopting television as a surrogate moral source (no doubt some bright spark has done an awfully clever thesis on the merits of 'Air Wolf' in contrast to those of 'The A-Team').
July 2008
I am a Robot by Helen Smith
I suspect that this collection of ‘robots’ by James Johnson-Perkins is a self-portrait. A collection of super–heroes, who are all versions of the artist. Each figure strikes a heroic pose and don’s marvellous headgear, jacket or boots. The palate of poster colours, (red, yellow, green, white, and blue), reflect the Lego*, building blocks they are constructed from. Surely to be a robot the automaton needs to be kinetic in some way. These 20 cm tall figures are perhaps, models of robots. They are static, their movements implied.
James Johnson-Perkins retains a focus on the possibilities of playfulness as art in his practice. This is increasingly overt in his work and never more so than in the choice of Lego as his modernist referencing material. Play is serious, pre-school education as typified by the Reggio Emilia method of creativity as a learning experience for under-fives is well established as a bed-rock for the rest of an individuals life-long learning.
James Johnson-Perkins’ practice is always playful and often collaborative. However, this is a solo project that has links to other solo works, including low-fi digital videos influenced by 1980's home computer technology and featuring single blocks of colour, which could be described as digital versions of the Lego bricks.
The scale of this project, currently a hundred or more figures, is part of its success as an art-work. The process of designing an ever-increasing number brings with it a challenge of invention, limited by the possibilities intrinsic to the material; this will become increasingly difficult as the collection grows and is to my mind what the work is about.
* Lego, named after a Danish phrase 'leg godt' meaning playful
Helen Smith
Artist & Founder of Waygood
Newcastle Upon Tyne
Included in Play Exhibition Catalogue
October 2007
I won the maths prize at school by Matthew Cowan
Collaborations between artists and scientists often produce work which neither the artist nor the scientist would have dreamed of. Although there are massive tracts of common land between the fields of art and science, it is in a way of looking at the world that artists and scientists approach their work differently. Visual Artists often work with notions of what constitutes a finished piece in their mind, while practitioners in the field of sciences work through a process where rules and methodology are to the fore. James and Conor's collaboration at the Red Nile space throws light on these different methods of working, while also producing the potential for some beautiful artworks that demand both scientific and artistic scrutiny.
For their period of residency in the Red Nile space, James and Conor will further explore questions they have begun to ask in the realm of chaos and randomness. The Fibonacci numbers are used as the basis for creating colourful grid of numbers, an exercise in concentration as much as a dazzling set of figures. Their video works make use of the concept of the automaton, utilising James' penchant for lego constructions in an animation.
Complimenting the lego structures are an array of films that overwhelm you with their colours and ever changing blocks of primary colours. They take for their basis, randomly generated colours and operate through using basic shapes and regular transformation to become a captivating visual knock-out. Like the eyes of the old snake Kaa that hypnotises Mogli in the Disney film of The Jungle Book, these films have a hypnotic effect, and play with the way that our brains process colour and movement. They make you want to keep looking at them, in order to try to process their patterns and movement.
Conor and James' work overlaps in many ways, but it is their different approach to achieving similar aims that is the most rewarding aspect of their collaboration. James' work has previously set about making colourful and hypnotic films using colours from the colour wheel and an artists eye, but the addition of the potential to utilise a mathematician's principles, random colours and programmed sets of coordinates gives rise to an infinite number of pieces of work. These works have the feel of being lighter and structural for their lack of human input, but the capability for exploring colour and shape by iterating the creative process repeatedly using a machine.
Matthew Cowan
Artist and Director of Novellus Castellum
Newcastle Upon Tyne
Included in Exhibition Catalogue
James Johnson-Perkins & Dr Conor Lawless
Red Nile Collaboration
September 2007