James Rogers (b.1993, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, UK) studied Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts.
Rogers’ work explores figuration in the realm of the post digital, the moment of transformation that happens amongst his self built technnologies and hand working amongst them, examining the emerging digital/ physical landscape.
A self built printing machine has been hacked to extrude entire blocks of clay into coils, melting and constructing wax for casting in bronze, or when fitted with a drawing utensil - allow Rogers to connect his sculptural investigations to his works on paper as the mechanical pathways become depicted in lines.
His work explores connection, dependency, and how these tendencies are mirrored into our technological networks, and then fragmented or even broken as they translate themselves into digital information, physical emotions, then back again. It is here that he establishes his relevance to the underlying ‘digital-physical’ conversion processes of 3D printing and 3D scanning. Rogers will then introduce mark making, glitches, and accidents, working to effect on his artworks, the same processes of distortion that happens as content is created, retweeted, and repeated amongst us. It is here that he is testing the emotional bandwidth of our emerging networks.
Growing up on the outskirts of industrial Wolverhampton, James was often confronted with the pride of the Black Country’s industrial history, but also the realisation that there was a new digital landscape emerging - one that left the steel mills behind and moved to the cloud. Some of James’ earliest influences came from a combination of his grandfather; a known skilled glass engraver to the local towns, and his father as an electrician - this combined with his child like interest in the new digital world and the narrative centric gaming revolution that came with it - would often lead to him spending hours drawing out plans for various gadgets, vehicles, and the missions he would take them on. It was years later with the discovery of Hogarth’s conversation pieces that he understood the importance of the combination of people, narrative, and objects, in the depiction of social networks.
James studied and graduated from Camberwell College of Arts, London. He has recently been awarded the Fenton Arts Trust Award (2020) under the patronage of Dame Maggie Smith. He has previously been awarded the prestigious Mead Scholarship supported by the philanthropist Scott Mead. He has recently exhibited works on paper with Julian Page Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2021, shown his 3D printed porcelain works with Preston Fitzgerald, and shown at Oliver Beer’s studio.