Zabludowicz Collection Invites: James Ireland

About

Recent works are overtly concerned with urban space. Tubular lines cast inside bicycle inner tubes droop, hang and pose. Burger cartons are stacked to form plinth-like towers. Steel mesh is welded into boxes that define and cage a spray-painted form. An orange shoelace and clear plastic cable-ties grip twisted concrete.

Traces of the materiality of a city and its architecture connect to an interest in functionality and the mundane. What are the things that work so well they become standardised and therefore ubiquitous in our culture? The circulation of material use and re-use is a central concern. But the fabrication of these succinct objects has a care and density of feeling that is in tension with the idea of the readymade.

Ireland’s sculptural processes involve the manipulation of the possibilities of materials, with liquids rapidly solidifying and things being layered or masked. These processes are often withheld from the viewer. In the gallery space the sculptures each carve out their own coordinates in time and space.