Jim Roseveare MRSS | Artist Statement
I suspect that in ten thousand years, our geological legacy will be defined less by grand monuments and more by the accidental fossil of a Micky Flanagan slipper print, a stray hair from a barbershop floor, or a grease-stained bone from a kebab shop.
My practice is rooted in this specific brand of “reverse archaeology.” While I am a Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, my perspective is equally shaped by 40 years as an arboriculturist, spent negotiating the space between a chainsaw and a living tree. This multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, video, and performance, focusing on the complex relationship between culture and landscape through the lens of absurdity. I am deeply interested in the material nature of the world and how we experience it, producing work that is predominately elemental.
My work is informed by a diverse array of influences: the industrial weight of Richard Serra and the suspended domesticity of Cornelia Parker collide with the slapstick physics of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy. Even the gravity-defying logic of Road Runner finds its way into my lens-based and site-specific work.
I am drawn to The Impossible Task: much like Buster Keaton battling a folding house, the attempt to “correct” or measure physical forces creates a signature kinaesthetic tension. I view the landscape not as a pristine wilderness to be observed, but as a site of constant human intervention. I explore this by engaging with the power of physical forces, forms, and processes. Sculptural work frequently uses a hybridisation of industrial concrete with elements that are often ephemeral or purely conceptual: dust from a snooker cue, the trace of holy water, or a fleeting idea.
By leading with the mundane and the discarded, I address the Anthropocene—that much-debated epoch of human impact—through the realisation that humanity is an active part of the ecosystem, not separate from it. If we are truly integrated into the system, then our domestic debris, leisure rituals, and our late-night leftovers are as “elemental” as a mountain range. My work invites the viewer to recognise their own agency within a landscape that is as fragile as it is ridiculous.
Stele for Foreign Bodies. Broomhill Sculpture Park, Royal Society of Sculptors selection. The Royal Society of Sculptors was delighted to collaborate with Broomhill Estate in Devon in 2022.
This collaboration led to ‘In Harmony’, an exhibition, featuring art work by 17 members of the Society.
Articles/ video
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