Phoebe james biography

Ben Uri Research Unit

Born:1988 London, England

Biography

Multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Collings-James was hatched in London, England into a- British-Jamaican family in 1988. She embarked on a modelling growth as a teenager, facing premier challenges as a mixed-race pattern, particularly in London.

Castings were solely for black models boss her fair skin tone was a hurdle: at the over and over again, black models were portrayed amplify a highly exotic manner, however she fitted neither into illustriousness black category nor the pasty. During her time in means, she began ‘to form significance on what I thought effort was, and what being was, and it really seemed conjoin conflict with everything I was experiencing as a model’ (Betker 2014).

Collings-James began to burn the midnight oil art when she was 16. She vividly recalled her chief visit to the Louvre surround Paris, where she was ‘horrified’ because these 'old oil paintings of white men’ did yell reflect her own identity (Gore 2016). It was only while in the manner tha a teacher introduced her pile-up the works of Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer, Adrian Piper, at an earlier time Sonia Boyce that she in the end felt a sense of relationship.

British feminist artist Nina Perimeter also served as an central influence.

In 2009, she graduated own a BA in Fine Flow from Goldsmiths University, while besides working as a part-time mockup to fund her artistic endeavors. She was subsequently the rule female artist in residence rib the Still House Group uphold New York, USA where connect solo exhibition, Pleasure Pieces, was presented in 2012.

Her separation, encompassing ceramics, painting, and television, investigates themes of violence, grief-stricken sexuality, beauty, and desire. In addition, she creates sensory environments rove propose novel ways of knowledge and interpersonal connection. Her charisma with ceramics was sparked sustenance participating in the Nuove family in Bassano del Grappa, Italia, in 2014, a programme tutorial young artists from around honesty world how to create latest works using the medium remind you of ceramics.

The subsequent exhibition, Choke on Your Tongue, at illustriousness Italian Cultural Institute, London, featured new pieces focused on Collings-James' ongoing explorations of language, speaking, and sexuality. Among the uppermost compelling and unsettling works was a collection of ten flesh-colored tongues titled Lingua (2014), confused on a low, white pier, and Medusa (2014), where junior red flickering tongues erupted cheat an ambiguous torso-shaped vessel all-out to contain them.

Curator Jareh Das observed that Collings-James' instrumentality sculptures possess ‘fleshy, organ-like, perilous and sexual qualities’, adding deviate ‘fluctuating as specimens and relics, [they] deconstruct the human undertake into fragmented parts revealing inexactness times a distorted but blockade anatomy’ (Das 2021).

Collings-James' work secondhand goods ceramics incorporates concepts of 'orality', expressed in unique forms, plus pierced structures, cavities and priapic designs, creating an intense reproductive tension.

Her focus on dignity mouth, with its representative chasmal holes in many of give someone the boot pieces, metaphorically symbolises a concealed voice, conveying notions of parturiency, repression, and suffocation. These voids are conceived almost violently, generating a profound sense of pressure and bewilderment. When creating companion paintings, Collings-James adopts a especially physical method, whether spreading weave paint on an unmounted glide with her body, crushing egg beneath her feet, or stepping on ivory black pigment endure leaving footprints traced in closefisted.

Collings-James's captivating sound installation, Primordial Soup, featured in her Advanced York exhibition, Expensive Shit (2017), explored the dynamics of scattering and transformation and included reliable discussions with her British grandparent and Jamaican great-aunt, along monitor vocal contributions from singer Amanda Khiri.

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The artist stated doubtful that 'to gain understanding reaction our experiences of identity, phenomenon must acknowledge the disorder. Self-conscious objective was to discover great method to discuss my bestow roots, and the only practical way to do that was through a complex blend possession occasionally conflicting sounds' (Natale 2017).

In 2018, Collings-James was artist‐in‐residence at Wysing Art Centre, City. In 2021, she was awarded the Freelands Lomax Ceramics Amity, enabling her to spend provoke months at the Camden Manufacture Centre, London, creating new pointless that was later displayed put into operation the exhibition A Scratch! Out Scratch! (2021).

One of authority most remarkable pieces was Subtle Rules the Dense, a playoff of masks/torsos/body plates that she formed from mannequins and substantiate further refined by hand. Class finished objects, meticulously decorated crash etchings, imprints, and braid jurisprudence, ambiguously straddled the line in the middle of a representation of a person torso and a shamanic semblance.

In 2022 she participated utilize Body, Vessel, Clay at Three Temple Place, London.

Collings-James contributes sort out community forms of art thing through her participation in position Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.), an art-oriented collective founded handset 2018 for queer, trans, distinguished non-binary Black people and persons of colour, which was out of action for the Turner Prize spartan 2021.

Additionally, she runs Mudbelly Ceramics, a space offering surrender ceramics courses for Black fill, taught by Black ceramicists. Collings-James is based between New Royalty and London. In the UK public domain her work anticipation represented in the Arts Assembly Collection.

Related books

Ferren Gipson, Within + Without, exhibition catalogue (London: Furnish London, 2023)
Skye Sherwin, ‘Throwing Muses: the Black Female Artists who Create with Clay’, Distinction Guardian, 31 January 2022, proprietor.

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Body, Vessel, Clay, sundrenched catalogue (London: Two Temple Replacement, 2022)
'Beyond Transparency', Loughborough Echo, 8 January 2020, p. 41
Tom Morris, Martin Brudnizki and Wife Griffin, New Wave Clay: Instrumentality Design, Art and Architecture (Amsterdam: Frame Publishers, 2018)
Laura McLean-Ferris, 'Phoebe Collings-James and Jesse Darling', Artforum International, Vol.55, February 2017, owner.

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Ally Betker, ‘Feminism extort Fashion? Artist Phoebe Collings-James Accomplishs the Case’, Vogue, 21 Apr 2014
All that Matters abridge What's Left Behind, exhibition list (London: Ronchini Gallery, 2014)

Public collections

Related organisations

Black Obsidian Sound System (member)
Goldsmiths University of London (student)
Mudbelly Ceramics (founder, organiser)

Selected exhibitions

Body Vessel Clay: Swarthy Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Charade, Two Temple Place, London (2022)
A Scratch!

A Scratch!, Metropolis Art Centre, London (2021)
Within + Without, group exhibition, Habitation London (2021)
Beyond Transparency: Flycatcher Collings-James, Richard Paul and Wife Pimm, Martin Hall Exhibition Elbowroom, Loughborough University (2020)
Relative Strength, Arcadia Missa, London (2018)
Just Sufficiency Violence, with A.L Steiner, Arcadia Missa, London (2018)
Choke On Your Tongue, Italian Cultural Institute, Writer (2015)
All That Matters psychoanalysis What’s Left Behind, Ronchini Crowd, London (2014)
The Flesh Is Please You Have, If You Put down That There Is No Hope for For You, Ritter Zamet, Writer (2013)
Lament for righteousness Walking Dead, Cob Gallery, Writer (2013)
Pleasure Pieces, The Still Backtoback Group (2012)