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Jim Ricks

Irish and American contemporary artist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Jim Ricks is an American–born Irish conceptual artist, writer, and curator. He has exhibited throughout Ireland and internationally, including a number of public art projects.[1][2]

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Early life and education

Ricks was born in San Francisco, California.[3] He started painting graffiti in the early 1990s.[4] He studied photography and graduated from the California College of the Arts (2002), and received a Masters degree from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Burren College of Art programme (2007).[5][6][7][8][9]

Career

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Drone imagery incorporated into the traditional method of Afghan carpet making, shown at the Imperial War Museum 2017.
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"Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen", County Clare, Ireland, 2011
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Diptych from a 2016 exhibition in Mexico City.

Ricks's work utilises appropriation, institutional critique, politics, and humour.[3][10] He has had solo shows in the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Mexico.[11]

Ricks was director of 126 Artist-run Gallery from 2007 to 2009, curating a number of shows and organizing exchanges with other artist-run spaces.[12] With Stephanie Syjuco, he created knock-offs of work at the Frieze Art Fair in London, 2009.[13][14]

In an ongoing body of work, "Jim Ricks has developed the method of synchro-materialism as a means to consider the territory where art meets capitalism", and he has used this methodology in exhibition, performance, and print since 2010.[15][16] In 2015 he travelled to Afghanistan to make Carpet Bombing, a large traditionally made carpet featuring imagery of military drones – an updated version of Afghan's war rugs.[17][18] He participated in the 2017 Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.[19]

Public projects

  • Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen is a large inflatable sculpture designed for people to interact with and play on.[20][8] It is a twice-the-size replica of a 6,000-year-old megalithic portal tomb, the Poulnabrone Dolmen situated in The Burren, County Clare. It traveled to venues around the Aughty Region of County Galway in June 2011 and was a Galway County Council project.[21][22] Cristín Leach of The Sunday Times wrote:

    "We need to start thinking more creatively about public art. Jim Ricks has. Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen... is a commentary on our past, our present, the concept of "brand Ireland" and the very idea of public art; and everyone is invited to bounce. A temporary, movable, witty, interactive, contemporary public artwork we are all invited to play with? [Alice] Maher has endorsed it as "the best public art piece...ever". She might just be right."[23]

    The piece was also shown alongside Jeremy Deller's 2012 inflatable Stonehenge, Sacrilege, in Belfast,[22][24] and was featured in the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition Futures 12.[5][25][6]
  • Ricks is working on the long-term, global public art project In Search of the Truth (or En Busca de la Verdad ). It is a collaboration with Ryan Alexiev, Hank Willis Thomas .[26][27][28] The New York Times writes: "The "Truth Booth," a roving, inflatable creation, in the shape of a cartoon word bubble with "TRUTH" in bold letters on its side, serves as a video confessional. Visitors are asked to sit inside and finish the politically and metaphysically loaded sentence that begins, "The truth is ..."".[29] The project has travelled Ireland, Afghanistan, South Africa, Australia, the United States, and Mexico,[30][31] recording and then exhibiting the thoughts of many people on the subject of truth in several countries.[32][33][34]
  • Life's a Beach (Art imitates life), Gable end mural responding to the political Murals in Northern Ireland, Abercorn Rd., Derry, Northern Ireland, April 2016[35]
  • Sesiones Publicas, San Agustín, La Lisa, Cuba, a LASA project, August 2017.[36]
  • He helped to restore the Albert Power (sculptor) sculpture in County Galway, Ireland.[37]

Museum projects

Ricks was involved in a 2 year project, Sleepwalkers (2012–15), at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Six artists were invited to an "unusual experiment in exhibition production".[38] Ricks's contributions included an unauthorised exhibition, a curated open call (Future Perfect),[39] a solo show (Bubblewrap Game: Hugh Lane),[40] and closing event and performances.[41] Aidan Dunne of the Irish Times describes Ricks's offerings as a "curatorial process of selection and validation, making a museum within the museum comprising works from the real collection, artworks borrowed from elsewhere, non-art objects from flea markets and a commissioned copy of an Ed Ruscha painting."[10] During the programme, he also included works by Richard Hamilton (artist), James Barry, Jeremy Deller, Gerard Dillon, Robert Ballagh, fr:Raphaël_Zarka, and James Hanley.[42][43]

Ricks was part of Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 at the Imperial War Museum, London, 2018–19.[44]

He exhibited work made in Afghanistan with Ryan Alexiev, Hank Willis Thomas, and Najeebullah Najeeb at the Trotsky Museum in Mexico City in 2022.[45][46]

Solo exhibitions

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Bibliography

  • Ricks, Jim (Editor), Artist-run democracy: sustaining a model, 15 years of 126 gallery, Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2022. ISBN 9789493148734[51]
  • de Búrca, Ella, Michaële Cutaya, Jim Ricks. IRLDADA: 201916. Mexico City: Black Crown Press, 2019. ISBN 9780578546940 [52]
  • Ricks, Jim. Alien Invader Super Baby (Synchromaterialism VI). Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2018. ISBN 9789491677755
  • Packer, Matt, Declan Long, and Jim Ricks. "Here Comes The Summer", Derry: Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry, 2017.
  • Bossan, Enrico. 2016 an image of Ireland : contemporary artists from Ireland. Crocetta del Montello: Antiga edizioni, 2016. ISBN 9788899657185
  • Edited by Michael Dempsey and Logan Sisley. Sleepwalkers. Dublin: Hugh Lane Gallery and Ridinghouse, 2015. ISBN 9781905464982

See also

References

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