Within the 20th century collective imagination the cockroach became an unwitting symbol of survival. Rumour has it this perspective spread from their appearance post-Hiroshima, however, no concrete evidence establishes their survival. Subsequent tests have found them more resistant to radiation than humans, but not indestructible when exposed to high doses.
Rather, they likely fill a metaphorical void necessitated by the fear of armageddon. Their repellant characteristics analogous for what remains of humanity when pushed beyond the brink. For the latter half of the century they function in place of Isaac Rosenberg’s “queer sardonic rat” with its “cosmopolitan sympathies.”
The terror of the early 21st century is vastly different to the century that preceded, it is no longer a white hot flash or “shrieking iron and flame,” but rather a field of complexity that blots out human comprehension of the world surrounding us. Survival no longer predicated on sheltering, but instead requiring a Kafkaesq metamorphosis into a sturdier exoskeleton equipped labourer, readied to endure.
Located on the darker edge of The Terminal (2021), James Irwin’s environment comprises two separate pieces brought together into a disorientating overload. Interceding on one another, the video backdrop Removal (2020) and sculptural object cockroach_for_offsite_mods_applied_2 (2020) assault the visitor with non-human visual inputs, information better suited for the technical administration of machine vision or the sensorial chaos of the insect. Accompanied by audio by My Panda Shall Fly, repeated antenna engulf from below and descend from above, simulating a sticky entanglement.
Within his PhD research, Irwin treats the digital image as grounds for endless code-based distortions, testing new forms of subjective experience and our own interfacing with the aesthetic results through everyday screen based technologies. The generative nature of these experiments are best experience through Irwin’s new sculptural edition Screen><Sound (2021), available in two different configurations, in which custom coded software performs an endless permutation of imagery on digital displays, displays whose internal sounds are verbalised through exciter speakers and electromagnetic coil mics.
Screen><Sound (Config 1) - Surface Collider: Fatty Wobble
Screen><Sound (Config 2) - Surface Collider: Rain
Finally, Irwin is presenting two new print editions, screen child iii (2020) and screen child iv (2020), each born from the mutational capacity of his code based practice, captured as frozen moments of a potentially endless variation.
James Irwin (b. 1980) is an artist living and working in London, currently a PhD candidate at the Contemporary Art Research Centre, Kingston School of Art researching the point between code and image. Solo exhibitions include: Listening to Xanax, Gossamer Fog, London; The Edge, SKELF, online (2018); and Binary Translations, Space In Between (2013); and group shows: Terms and Conditions May Apply, Annka Kultys Gallery; Home Alone, DATEAGLE, London (2018); and Let’s Pluck the Bird, Limoncello (2013). Between 2017 and 2019 he organised SuperHumanCorporation: An Exploration of Digital Nature, a series of web based exhibitions pairing US and UK artists and writers attempting to map a human-centric materiality of the Internet. He was awarded the Emerging Artists Bursary Award by the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 2012.
The Terminal: Human Shaped Whole
directed by: Jason Isolini
featuring: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ian Bruner, Joshua Citarella, Jessica Evans, James Irwin, Claire Jervert, Kakia Konstantinaki, Angeline Meitzler, Erin Mitchell and Neale Willis
curated by: Off Site Project
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
James Irwin .