James Cousins: The Structure of Existence

For conceptual painter James Cousins, spending five years in London in the 1990s, after graduating from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, was formative. “At that time the Frieze show had begun and Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and the other young British artists were bursting onto the scene. Charles Saatchi had an experimental space where I saw major artists from the United States. And there was a lot of conceptually-based sculpture, which reminded me that I needed to think carefully about a conceptual approach to painting.” His early training had, “rigor, and we learnt how to look at things”. The influence of this structured and formal study is now visible in the highly crafted forms that Cousins’s mature paintings have taken.

After returning to New Zealand, Cousins continued his study, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, where he now teaches. Working toward his third solo exhibition for Brisbane’s Ryan Renshaw Gallery, he continues his investigations into postmodern painting, tracing the trajectory from a realist starting point into an image that reads as an abstracted and fragmented yet highly unified picture.

When Cousins spoke to Art Collector, he had just returned from five weeks of research, viewing exhibitions at the Biennale of Sydney, then London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He saw Matisse cutouts in London and an immersive exhibition by Sigmar Polke, Chris Wool and others. In these experiences, he was examining “the making, the decision-making processes of these artists. It is the great opportunity in spending time with the works of art – one that you can’t get from a book.”

His own approach to picture making reflects this interest in structure. “I am interested in paint and painting in a way that is cognisant of its history. Within my practice I introduce a series of limitations that allow for the examination of postmodern ideas about painting, in an open and pluralistic sense.” His body of work is a continuum, and the new works for Australia extend from those seen at Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland in 2013.

“These works are continuing in their extension of certain processes and approaches. I use a mechanical process and spray guns, so that the gesture of the hand is not evident in the work. Increasingly it is the mechanical gesture that I use to play off against the contrast of the gesture created by the hand.”

Many of the recent works begin with a figurative image, taken from a photograph, from which Cousins paints a flower or organic form. These images are often drawn from pictorial reference books, themselves second hand and outdated. Cousins is interested in pursuing the notion of veracity and truth in historical references from the relatively recent past that have been superseded by new truths, currently seen as just as immutable.