Jim Lockey: Artist in Residence

About

The exhibition, installed throughout Swedenborg House, includes: the exegetical study of mundane architecture, photographs of hidden realities, and documentation of a pilgrimage to discover all of art. Whilst the narratives Jim creates within his works are never more than plainly fictional they invite close inspection of our distinctions between what is real and what is imagined. Works such as ‘Teach Me All Of Art While I Stand On One Leg' (example, pictured) question the authority of rival interpreters of Scripture, using an absurdist motif drawn from a parable in the Jewish Midrash tradition. Jim continues his interrogation of the revelator with the narrative texts he has created for Swedenborg House, which claim to unearth the ‘spiritual sense' of the building, just as Swedenborg claimed to reveal the internal sense of the Bible. Jim uses Swedenborg's scientific language of Correspondences to describe the symbolic significance of mundane features such as a crack in the wall, a door, a chair. The purpoted logic of the texts is subverted by striking surrealist elements, which echo Swedenborg's dream journal and other accounts of visionary experience. Swedenborg's dream journal and other accounts of visionary experience. In this way Jim's exhibition invites the viewer to experience Swedenborg House through a prism of Swedenborg's work. Jim Lockey lives and works in Kent, UK. Jim was born in 1987, and is married to fellow artist Katy Norton. He completed his Masters and BA hons degree in Fine Art at The University For The Creative Arts (UCA), graduating in 2010. Jim's work is about creating fictions and the process of art itself. Working predominantly with text, video and performance he explores the complex relationship between artifact and viewer. He is the curator at LIMBO Arts, Margate and current Artist in Residence at the Swedenborg Society, London. www.jimlockey.co.uk The exhibition opening on 20 October 2012 is organized in conjunction with the Bloomsbury Festival 2012. Refreshments will be served. http://www.bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/event/id/224