- Venue
- Stand Assembly Studios
- Location
- East Midlands
James E Smith is an artist. That is to say he makes a thing that titles itself, or perhaps it should be, that others in places of authority on such matters like God, James Joyce and also Nicholas Serota entitle, art. That is to say he has taken that crucial and daunting step and has stated a claim as part of the growing demographic of people on this smallening globe that make it – a thing called art – and thusly, respectively have made a claim as part of the growing demographic of people on this smallening globe that call themselves artists. I don’t know when he did this, that is, stated his claim and I don’t know what ‘it’, ‘it’ being what these people, and true, this person, that being James E Smith, is, but I am assuring myself that he has done this, as this is why he has asked me to do this. That is to say this is why I am doing what I am doing now, that being telling you philistines to the ways of James E Smith, what I know of the ways of James E Smith, that being a very diminutive quantity of knowledge stuffs that I am having to purge from the caverns of my own philistinian memory in a full of heart attempt to verbalise how and why James E Smith does ‘it’ and to some length’s what I hold ‘it’ to be. Anyroute, here in small distances, is what I understand James E Smith to be. He is long and slender of body, his hair would like to be described similarly and he has some of this substance – a hairy one – on his smooth skinned face, beitall a tweak more coarse and hair-like in the hairy sense of the noun. He reminds me a touch of a canine, perhaps one of those afghan strains, elegant, sleek, and ample of stature yet inoffensive. I am pleased by his manner and his soft and reassuring intonation and his ease and ability to make sounds of talk for long, unbroken periods without making the recipient of these sounds tired or disinterested, on the contrary, the contrary. He has engaged me on many an occasion, without the requirement of an input of my noises about my actions and I will be sonorous in this instance here instead and proclaim with unmitigated sobriety, I enjoy listening to the boy! I should like to mind muster that his workly creations in the manner of art are of a parallel fluidity and proficiency. I am gripping forth hope, holding it outwards some maybe would say. Hope I am certainly clasping that this will be the case. And I am sure, lacking the requirement of reassurance, that it will certainly be, that is fluid and proficient, accomplished, a masterly or series of masterly inventions, a succession of things both replete with beauty and lack of pretension, emitting style and finesse whilst being shamelessly understated and modest. Yes, true wonderment, down-right fucking betterment, lets have it right here James E Smith, lets see what you have sir, ok, thank you! So manywhichpath, what does one know about what this male fashions for his skillcraft??? I can correctly tell you that I have seen some of it, some of his craftiness, his cunning foxiness, ‘it’ if you will. Will you?? You will? Good, then yes I can tell you this much, that much is true, I have seen it, and Ewww Weee! It aint one fraction of a shit half bad I will inform you this quantity. What is it that I have perceptively received with my sparklies? Well I have received a numerate measure of delectable fancies let me learn you this. I’ve seen stuffs that were drawn and stuffs that were not and were fathomed with the magicians hand and his little wonder-box of black process magic which goes snap or cachheenck cachheenck when one depresses its nipple. I’ve seen an old bum-like tramp of a man playing instruments of percussion intently, drunk I am sure of it, whilst our man in the field James E Smith sat on a table musing over profundities such as where he might get his next meal and of what it might consist. I’ve seen the boy bending pitches with machines I know not the names of, to indite the most fantastical clamour, a real raucous abrasion to the shell-like, a wonderfully painful, excruciating audition. I’ve seen him, back-turned, stripping off reels of a tape to disrupt its normative function of singing sweet lullaby’s of Michael Jackson and Now That’s What I Call Music 4 or other such year nineteen hundred and eighty delights – the benevolent appropriation and subsequent extradition of an archaic musicological form to the time of contemporaneousness, or something to that end. I’ve witnessed him re-create the night in a box with no holes or openings, or perhaps that was a dream I had. As much as the distance of what this prodigious youngen’ is forging in these moments I am not the most fitting informant. In the truth of the thing all I my own very self have to go upon is a small piece of papyrus with the rather gratuitous portrait of an enbronzed, god-like creation with a wildly large plastic penis seemingly placed bottomward in what must be said to be a manner equal in provocation and transgression, the dirty rascal. Let me assure you, this is not James although it has probably been one hundred hours since last I laid em upon im so I can’t really say for sure. So let me hand out with great vehemence and gusto my written offerings of apology, free of all deceit and hypocrisy and say sorry for not rising to the challenge of delineating such very data of his present workliness, my advice would be to open your freakin peepers and have a goosey gan. My humble summation is that the surprises will be pleasant and fulfilling for all.