James Cauty

James Francis Cauty aka Jimmy Cauty, is a British artist, born in Merseyside on 19 December 1956. Over the past 40 years Cauty has distinguished himself as a musician, record producer, artist and cultural provocateur through fusions of high art, low art and popularist mediums - often to spectacular effect.

From painting the multi million selling hippy poster The Lord of the Rings as a teenage artist in the 1970s to a string of global top ten hits as co founder of The KLF, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu , and The Orb to implementation of the The K-Foundation and the seminal actions, The 1994 K Foundation Award and Watch the K-Foundation Burn a Million Quid , (1994) to later artistic experiments with sonic weapons, Advanced Acoustic Armaments , anti Iraq war postage stamps with Stamps of mass destruction and model making A Riot in a Jam Jar , dissent, cultural subversion and a gleeful level of high humour are elemental to all the work whilst never failing to engage its audience in critical pleasure.

His roguish and voluble approach has earned him a cult following for work that remains radical, responsive and darkly comical. He produces work that draws on and responds to contemporary culture, very often sampling it and sending/selling it back as recoded realities. In sonic weapon projects acoustic armaments were sent to protest sites and demonstrations, In billboard and stamp projects Mickey Mouse was sent to Iraq in ‘Operation Magic Kingdom’ whilst Julie Andrews danced across mountainous rubbish heaps, crushed cars were sold to second hand car dealers as art and riots have been rendered as tiny 1:87 scale models often displayed in upturned jam jars.

His new exhibition The Aftermath Dislocation Principle continues this preoccupation with small world re-enactments as a vast 1:87 scale-model landscape (equivalent to 1 sq mile in miniature) which has been desolated, deserted, destroyed, burnt and is devoid of life apart from 5000 or so model police that attend this apocalyptic aftermath; a kind of bizarre twisted model village experience, where Cauty continues his fascination with subversion, consumerism and entertainment through creative exploration and dark humor.

The appropriated police riot shield series ( Smiley Riot shields ) were originally created in 2012 for the occupy St Pauls eviction London and have been re issued with new editions in 2014, for the Paul Stolper Gallery, London. Cauty is represented in the UK by The L-13 Light Industrial Workshop , an independent London based art facility run by Steve Lowe, who tender organisational, theoretical, financial and moral support to the artist.
Also by Paul Stolper Gallery London who commission and facilitate selected Cauty limited editions.