James Angus

James Angus

02 June–28 July 200702 Jun–28 Jul 2007

James Angus’s works combine conceptual twists with consumate craft. He takes iconic and everyday forms—classic modernist buildings, an old racing car, a soccer ball, a rhino—and inverts, twists, recolours, divides, realigns, down-sizes, distorts and otherwise transforms them. A spruce scale-model of the Seagram Building lies on its back, revealing a subtle curve. Another model of an iconic building, Lakeshore Drive, folds in upon itself, as a Moebius Strip. Angus loves paradoxes: an upside-down hot-air balloon suspended in the foyer of the Sydney Opera House or a Mack truck incongrougly parked in a gallery space it couldn’t possibly have entered. Angus often uses computer models to design his works and consults mathematicians, engineers, and biologists as part of his research. He renders a Bugatti Type 35, a 1920s grand prix car, life-size, but with a thirty degree tilt. He explores the aerodynamic properties of the Manta Ray. A mosquito and a gorilla skull rendered in tessellated parquetry suggest a mathematical order underlying the evolutionary process. Exhibition organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Supported by Visions of Australia.