James Unsworth
James Unsworth’s work is carnal and appears in full realism, there is no mystery and a lot of seduction. Every work seems to hold sincerities and pure truths about force, attraction, desire, degradation, and self-destruction. I interviewed him a while ago. He said this.
’The first time I started using the grotesque, taboo subjects and disgusting things was when I did an inversion of a Jophovars Witness pamphlet which was describing this perfect world and harmony where every one was working together, and were abundant, rich and happy. Which was a complete lie. So I inverted it and made it disgusting and horrible. - My work is always generated by drawing. There is some nice about how easy it is to draw. Something so simple. It is from my imagination, which gives me the license to do whatever I want, but it always tied down to this.’
‘This always grounds it a little bit. People have this conception that this kind of work is new, the vulgarity of it and sexuality of it but if you do a bit of research you realize that is got a complete popular print history tradition that goes back to the beginning of print, since images were accessible. I have a great respect for the history of print especially the way it made images more accessible and more democratic. All of my drawings are based on the history of popular print and political charactertures, and things like Hogart and James Gillray. I reference a lot from Hogarth, Gillray, and Cruickshank. My exciting days off are at the Library to look through the microfilms. I went out the Paris for a couple of days and plundered the Library out there. I find they are the best place. They seem to be very organized out there. It is must easier to go to the Bibliotheque in France than to go to the British Library. I’ve done a lot of research on the grotesque image of the body and charactertures of grotesqueries. I also do a lot of visual research on alternative nightclubs documenting performance and transgressive behaviour.’