Mabon

Jamie Mills (b. 1983)
Jamie Mills is a musician, sound and visual
artist. His practice is underpinned by
investigation surrounding the dissemination
of gesture between materiality and
environments – referencing both internal
and external landscapes. These concerns
are reinforced by an interdisciplinary
approach to working and are made manifest
through the renderings of sounds or
materials often sourced or retrieved via
immersion into nature or borderlands,
and with particular reference to his aural
works, articulated and manipulated through
unorthodox instrumental preparations
and the incorporation and processing of
field recordings. The term ‘gestalt’ refers
to a concept within psychotherapeutic
fields, inferring that the nature of a
whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. Mills’ employment of the mediums
of photography, sound and mark-making
can be read in this sense whereby a reality
is constructed not by the sole surface
representation of any individual element
alone, but instead there is a sense that
the artists reality is presented through
the relationships and the spaces between
elements. In other terms, it is work that
requires both on one hand a stepping
away from, and on the other an immersion
into, in order to extract an empathetic
understanding of the essence of the
work that presides from both a conscious
and subconscious framework of mind.
Universally inherent within his process of
rendering, there is a conscious dialogue
between, on one hand material intent (or
‘essence’) and on the other, control (or the
relinquishing of control), so as to make work
that negotiates thresholds and occupies at
times a liminal status. In this sense Mills’
“intuitively composed” sound works, and
his images or assemblages become markers
to a series of internal journeys or rituals
informed by an often poetic dialogue
between material, form and environment.
‘Memory and Space (Vestige)’
perforated paper, ink, beeswax, 25 x 21 cm
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