SAMUEL JAMES
Samuel James has been a video artist and designer for contemporary performance companies and independent dancers for thirty years. He uses photography and film to connect abstracted, composited natural environments with gestural information from performance makers or live drawing as a way to understand place through human phenomena. In his cognitive video drawings, mark making creates emergent phenomena in connection to filmed environments.
He mostly works as a projection designer for contemporary performance (Performance Space, Critical Path, Dancehouse, De Quincey Company, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Blacktown Arts Centre, Bankstown Arts Centre, Artshouse, FORM, PICA), Indigenous companies (Jannawi Dance Clan, NT Dance, Miku Performing Arts, Marrugeku, Blakdance, Jasmin Sheppard) physical theatre companies (Erth, Legs on the Wall, Big hArt), visual theatre companies (Kantanka Creative, Talya Rubin, My Darling Patricia) and mixed ability companies (Back to Back Theatre, Dance Integrated Australia).
In 2006 he won Best Dance Film at the Australian Dance Awards for a project with choreographer Julie-Anne Long and received two Green Room Award nominations for projection design in Nightgarden (2009) and The Piper (2014). In the music realm he has collaborated with Veronique Serret and William Barton, percussion groups Noreum Machi (Korea), Synergy Percussion and Ensemble Offspring.
He has received artist commissions for Blik Blik Festival 2019 (Czech Republic), Dream Shelving (Campbelltown Arts Centre 2011), Amygdala: Fear Conditioning (Artspace 2010), The Cracks (Performance Space, Carriageworks 2010) and Vivaria (Reeldance International Festival of Dance of Screen 2009).
He regularly takes part in international residencies for research and development of his video practice at LKV Trondheim, DEPO2015 Czech Republic, The Banff Centre, SìM Reykjavik, Artelés Finland and GlogauAIR Berlin. He has also developed and exhibited his installation work in regional Australia in places such as BigCi, Bilpin (2022), Bundanon Trust (2015), the Tanks Arts Centre Cairns (2012) and Broken Hill Art Exchange (2012).
He has an MFA from UNSW Art and Design on Digital Animism (2012).