The Long Way Round
JAMES CAPPER
The Long Way Round presents drawings by James Capper of his past, present and future sculpture. These works represent the foundation of Capper's sculpture, the formal basis for the machines that he constructs.
These drawings reveal the primacy of aesthetics in the artist’s compositional practice. Ranging from initial concept sketches through revisions onto tracings, to technically detailed blueprints, the drawings chart a process of refinement whereby the ideal formal potential of the preliminary draft is made achievable and an insight into the way ideas, confined at first to the artist’s imagination, come to be confirmed in drawing and in sculpture.
The union of utility and aesthetics is apparent in the correspondence of colour with component in some of the works. Colour acts as code marking a schedule for the construction of the machine, or to classify different elements of the sculpture. In this way colouration is linked to the material qualities of the sculpture and the process of its assembly. Elsewhere negative space is used to allow the artist to better visualise the as-yet-unbuilt machine's occupation of space.
Also included in the exhibition are "machines" and "hand tools" - small sculptures made in steel. James Capper’s art is reluctant to distinguish in critical terms between the materials, instruments, forms and concepts employed in his work. Every aspect of the practical production of a piece is to be understood as part of a unified vision.
