James Howard: Authorized

About

For his exhibition at the Aubin Gallery, Howard will exhibit a series of graphic-designed collages inspired by illegal websites and spam emails. Real Dolls is an 15 foot wide and 8 foot tall poster advertising life-size sex dolls for sale. Filling the largest wall in the gallery will be a 3 metre high and 8 metre wide installation, comprising of 12 one metre high posters highlighting a variety of crude and disturbing subject matters, from identity theft to the dangers of unlicensed pharmaceuticals. Finally, Howard will exhibit a looping video of 20 animated adverts including commercials promoting holistic healing and clairvoyance. The internet has become a precarious labyrinth of online dangers and users must navigate their way past spam, scams and cyber terrorists. Email inboxes are filled with junk and web pages are strewn with pop up adverts, from false money making schemes to black magic and knock off goods. James Howard employs a mixture of deception and humour in his work; revealing the seedy and sinister alongside the sublime and ridiculous in fraudulent schemes developed to violate and deceive. Howard trawls the internet hijacking content from perverse and shocking websites in order to create new, ludicrous and purposefully ambiguous narratives as part of an ongoing social commentary on the naivety of those who fall victim to the internet's malevolence.