Kim James Collection
In the year 2000 I was fortunate enough to meet the former artist Kim James in his farm house in Northamptonshire. He had had a soaring career throughout the late 50’s and 60’s exhibiting alongside such luminaries as Moore, Frink and Hepworth in some of the top galleries of the time. Although he knew his art to be good, in 1969 he became disillusioned with the art scene and left to follow a new career, initially in cybernetics and then went on to pioneer art in psychotherapy. His whole collection of sculptures remained unseen in his attic, caked in dust, for 31 years until I walked through his door and my eyes widened at what we saw in his attic.
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“I would never start a piece of work with an idea which would carry through to the end, nor was I ever taken by a particular form of bone or wood which inspired me, as Moore or Hepworth were. Instead I nearly always started with something, usually in the 50’s and 60’s a piece of clay. I would spend ages just cutting and squeezing it with a glazed air, almost catatonic, deaf to whatever went on or sometimes thinking about something entirely beside the point, frequently beautiful women of whom I seemed to know an awful lot. A lot of my work was expressed as a tribute to beautiful women.”
Kim James
Composition iV. 1966. This is an original sand cast aluminium maquette for a high relief sculpture that was to become the ceiling of the entrance foyer of Hoveringham Gravel, later Amalgamated Roadstone plc It measures 240cm by 166cm and weighs around 400kg
"Dove" - A high relief plaster panel measuring 2' by 3' (61cm by 91cm)
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"Ram" - A high relief plaster wall panel measuring 3' by 2' (91cm by 61cm)
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What if architecture could capture the essence of an untamed volcano? Imagine what it would be like if, like Marco Polo in
