James Cauty

James Cauty’s roguish and voluble approach has earned him a cult following for work that remains radical, responsive and darkly comical. He produces work that draws on and responds to contemporary culture, very often sampling it and sending/selling it back as recoded realities. In billboard and stamp projects Mickey Mouse was sent to Iraq in ‘Operation Magic Kingdom’ whilst Julie Andrews danced across vast rubbish heaps, crushed cars were sold to second hand car dealers as art and riots have been rendered as tiny models in jam jars.

He rose to fame in 1989 when he formed the KLF with Bill Drummond, and following a string of number one hits they continued their collaboration with the K Foundation that orchestrated a series of high profile art ‘actions’ – describing these actions as a “brit award buried at Stonehenge, bad crop circles and a wicker man” and “a major body of cash and a box of matches”. In 1994 they burnt 1 million quid.

This was followed by similarly bizarre activities with ‘K2 Plant Hire Ltd’ and in 1997 ‘Advanced Acoustic Armaments’ (“home made sonic weapons and a dead cow”).

In 2002 he started to produce the contentious ‘Stamps of Mass Destruction’ with Blacksmoke – an imagined art collective, and pursued the art of philately with a new imagined collective the C.N.P.D. (Cautese Nationál Postal Disservice) 2004-2008.

His most recent work has been focussed on the making of 1:87 riotous scale models as small world re-enactments, often displayed in upturned jam jars as A Riot in A Jam Jar. His new exhibition The Aftermath Dislocation Principle continues this preoccupation with small world re-enactments as a vast 1:87 scale-model landscape (equivalent to 1 sq mile in miniature) which has been desolated, deserted, destroyed, burnt and is devoid of life apart from 5000 or so model police that attend this apocalyptic aftermath; a kind of bizarre twisted model village experience, where Cauty continues his fascination with subversion, consumerism and entertainment through creative exploration and dark humour.

In 2016 James Cauty organizes the Aftermath Dislocation Principle tour – a pilgrimage to over 36 historic riot sites – around the country with three shipping containers, containing 1:87 scale models showing vast post-apocalyptic landscapes and which travel through the country independently. From the extreme to the mundane to the populist and elitist, the exhibition sites ranging from muddy fields and small community centres to major national art galleries. This tour, known as the ADP Riot Tour, ends on Christmas Day, 2016 in Bedford, at the Panacea Museum, with all three containers being sited together for the first time ever in the former Panacea Society’s ‘Garden of Eden’.