“Inviting humanity's complex, fugitive nature into your life is terrifying and exhilarating. It is a hopeful act in a wild world. “
Image courtesy of David Fulford
Working from his studio in the North of England, Jamie Frost (born 1977, UK) creates paintings and sculptures which depict the tenderness and recklessness of fleshy beings full of hopes, fears and desires. There is fallibility in the work, it speaks honestly about a growing sense of the precarious. Early in his career, Jamie was awarded a scholarship in Tuscany. The operatic high stakes drama of mannerist sculpture still shows as an influence in his work.
The artist often speculates on personal themes: physical breakdown and illness is presented as fragmented forms; figures resist and comfort each other in works that address social and personal dynamics.
His work has been shown widely, including a touring solo exhibition of sculpture and supporting drawings. When making sculpture, Jamie throws hunks of moist green timber together in dynamic poses, punctuating them with delicate and intimately carved details. His paintings begin as broad, visceral figure-marks. The activity on the surface suggests all that is bodily. Coiled up energy is released in sopping wet brush strokes.
Recently he has been shortlisted for the Materiality Matters prize, the Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize, the Cotswold Sculpture Park ‘sculpture of the year’ award and the New Light Sculpture Prize. Previously he has been awarded accolades for drawing and sculpture, including membership of the Royal Society of Sculptors and the Society of Portrait Sculptors’ Talos award. Features and interviews include: Creative Boom; Considering Art podcast; The Yorkshire Post; The Guardian; The Times; Daily Telegraph, among others.
Jamie is developing work for a major solo exhibition, launching in Guernsey in autumn 2027.
“The figures in my work are a feral, unguarded people. They scrabble around, trip and fall, leap up, push and kick, kneel in veneration. They are ambitious and lost. They are contradictions. Understanding them is like trying to step in the same stream twice. My experiences of hyper vigilance, grief, acceptance, and hope are in these works. I find myself in the images I create and I ask you to do the same. Curiosity, empathy and communication will redeem us from living fearful lives.
Humans are vulnerable but powerful, we recognise that in each other. The possibilities held within ourselves are intoxicating. Such a vital, overwhelming force can wreak havoc or perform miracles. We should welcome that duality. We can take comfort from the chaotic world we experience, and our part in it, without judgement.
I am compelled by the physicality of things, objects, the landscape, other people, of myself. This is the language I draw upon when making, the things we feel most deeply show physically in our bodies. I'm a great believer in the idea that we are corporeal manifestations of our private and collective joys, traumas, triumphs and expectations.
To physically embody a state of acceptance in an artwork, to observe and reflect the beautiful mess, is enabling for me. Inviting humanity's complex, fugitive nature into your life is terrifying and exhilarating. It is a hopeful act in a wild world.”
Download a pdf catalogue here.
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