'Happenings' Artist SpotLight - James Aldridge
The Distance Between Us
I’m a visual artist working with people and places. I research different places through walking/cycling, collecting and recording, and I reflect on my experiences through making.
This individual side of my practice is interwoven with participatory projects, training and consultancy. The individual and the participatory each feed into and inform the other, generating a body of practice-led research into the value of artful, embodied and situated (place-based) learning.
I work with a variety of media, choosing those of relevance to the subject matter, from 'natural' and recycled materials, gathered locally, to photographs, text and video. The resulting artwork may take the form of small hand-held objects, wearable artwork, freestanding sculpture or large site-specific installations.
Out of my Head
I’m an Associate Artist with MK Gallery (Milton Keynes) CAS (Chapel Arts Studios, Andover) and a member of the Climate Museum UK team. Underpinning all areas of my practice, is a belief in the urgent need to develop new ways of seeing and being with the world, in this time of climate breakdown and ecological collapse.
I am currently leading an art and outdoor learning project in the Andover area called Ash Tree Stream. Ash Tree Stream is a one-year visual arts project, run in partnership with Andover Trees United, CAS and five schools in the Andover area.
Ash Tree Stream is enabling school children and teaching staff to use visual arts processes to learn about Ash trees and Ash dieback disease, outside of the classroom, and within the context of local cultural heritage and climate change. At the same time I am developing a new body of work through my own research into Ash trees, in preparation for the Ash Tree Stream exhibition at CAS in July. It was out of this research that the photographic series The Ash Looks Back emerged, which I will be exhibiting as part of Happenings at for Fringe Arts Bath this year.
The Ash Looks Back consists of a series of photographs taken with a camera trap strapped onto Ash trees, recording the animal species which the Ash tree helps to support, and which will be impacted on by the 80 - 90 % of Ash trees expected to die from the disease in the coming years.
For more information on my work and the Ash Tree Stream project, please see:
www.jamesaldridge-artist.co.uk