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May 15, 2011
in sculpture art
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Adam James Hug Mixed media sculpture, 1 to 1 scale “Hey, It’s really good to hear from you. Sorry I haven’t been in touch in a while, I have had some important news recently and have been trying to piece things together since. Do you remember I told you that I had never met my dad? Well, my mum and he had a whirlwind romance fueled by LSD in the 1970s, of which I was the result. Dad had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, and very soon after I was born became violent, so mum picked me up and left. I have never heard from him since and it had always been something I needed to do, to find him. Well, after years of thinking about it I finally plucked up the courage to go and start looking for him. Me and my girlfriend Boo began looking online to see if I could find him on any of those family tree websites. I searched for his name and the year he was born and very quickly we found him. Staring us in the face was his birth certificate. But there next to the online birth certificate was an option that read ‘Click for death certificate’. I was stunned. The search that I had waited thirty years to begin was over in five minutes and a few clicks of the mouse. Click. My dad is dead.” “It turns out he died six years ago. The following weeks were an emotional roller coaster. How did he die? Was it really my dad? At that time I didn’t know of any family on my father’s side, only vague stories of mad aunts and lobotomized grandmas told to me by my mum. Desperate to know the circumstances I contacted the coroner’s office in Birmingham, where he died. Frustratingly I was told I would need to wait weeks until his next of kin had been contacted. I was told this was due to the sensitive nature of his case. A few days later my phone rang. A lady called Shirley with a Brummie accent introduced herself as my step-gran saying she had been contacted by the coroner’s office. Turns out dad got married to a lady called Tina, Shirley’s daughter. Like my father Tina too suffered from schizophrenia. A letter from the coroner and a long conversation with Shirley broke the news that Dad had hung himself from a tree in a park, near where he lived in Moseley, Birmingham. I caught the first train to Birmingham to visit his grave and to meet Shirley. She told me about my new family. Two aunts, two uncles, cousins and rumour of two half sisters. My head was spinning.” “I visited dad’s grave, and left him a letter. Saying goodbye to someone you have never met, isn’t easy. Hug, as I found out his family called him, was to me a work of fiction that I had been terrified of, yet as I got older I started to see him in the faces of outsiders and the lives of those forgotten by society. I always took solace in the possibility of finding him. It was weeks before I told Mum.” 1 year later… ‘Dead Body’ Scare at Art Gallery – Hornsey & Crouch End Journal … Guards were called to investigate a possible break-in at John Jones Gallery – The Project Space when an alarm went off in the exhibition room after closing hours on December 11. They found no evidence of a burglary but were spooked when their torches shone on the eerie lone figure in the corner of the room. Rather than investigate further they immediately called the police. Kate Jones, marketing director at John Jones, said: “We had a call to say a dead body had been found in the project space - shocking news which sent us into a panic too. But we were then called back shortly after, by the police saying that they had been in and discovered the figure was not in fact a real man. At which point it dawned on us that what they had seen was in fact a life size piece of art in our current show.” The piece dubbed “Hug” is dressed in wedding tops and tails and modeled on photographs of the artist Adam James’s father. A police spokeswoman confirmed they were called to the scene, but then “discovered it was in fact a mannequin”. Him and Me: Possessing the Dispossessed “Finding out about my dad’s death caused somewhat of a knee jerk reaction in me. I knew I needed to make work about it, almost unquestionably. I needed to make something that expressed my renewed feeling of closeness to this distant character in my life. It felt wrong to perform as him, but I liked the idea of getting closer through pretending to be him. So I decided to make a statue and cast of myself dressed as he was in a newly acquired photo of him as the groom at his wedding to Tina. I wanted to make a statue that was asleep, possibly drunk, but resting nevertheless, as I now felt he was. I immersed myself in the process and treated the sculpture of HUG as simply another appropriated character. It wasn’t until HUG was assembled and I stood in the gallery with my newly acquainted uncle that I was able to assess how I felt about the experience. Sad, yes. Happy; at the thought of what on earth my Dad would think of me making a sculpture of myself dressed as him.” -Adam James

Adam James

Hug

Mixed media sculpture, 1 to 1 scale

“Hey, It’s really good to hear from you. Sorry I haven’t been in touch in a while, I have had some important news recently and have been trying to piece things together since. Do you remember I told you that I had never met my dad? Well, my mum and he had a whirlwind romance fueled by LSD in the 1970s, of which I was the result. Dad had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, and very soon after I was born became violent, so mum picked me up and left. I have never heard from him since and it had always been something I needed to do, to find him. Well, after years of thinking about it I finally plucked up the courage to go and start looking for him. Me and my girlfriend Boo began looking online to see if I could find him on any of those family tree websites. I searched for his name and the year he was born and very quickly we found him. Staring us in the face was his birth certificate. But there next to the online birth certificate was an option that read ‘Click for death certificate’. I was stunned. The search that I had waited thirty years to begin was over in five minutes and a few clicks of the mouse. Click. My dad is dead.”

“It turns out he died six years ago. The following weeks were an emotional roller coaster. How did he die? Was it really my dad? At that time I didn’t know of any family on my father’s side, only vague stories of mad aunts and lobotomized grandmas told to me by my mum. Desperate to know the circumstances I contacted the coroner’s office in Birmingham, where he died. Frustratingly I was told I would need to wait weeks until his next of kin had been contacted. I was told this was due to the sensitive nature of his case. A few days later my phone rang. A lady called Shirley with a Brummie accent introduced herself as my step-gran saying she had been contacted by the coroner’s office. Turns out dad got married to a lady called Tina, Shirley’s daughter. Like my father Tina too suffered from schizophrenia. A letter from the coroner and a long conversation with Shirley broke the news that Dad had hung himself from a tree in a park, near where he lived in Moseley, Birmingham. I caught the first train to Birmingham to visit his grave and to meet Shirley. She told me about my new family. Two aunts, two uncles, cousins and rumour of two half sisters. My head was spinning.”

“I visited dad’s grave, and left him a letter. Saying goodbye to someone you have never met, isn’t easy. Hug, as I found out his family called him, was to me a work of fiction that I had been terrified of, yet as I got older I started to see him in the faces of outsiders and the lives of those forgotten by society. I always took solace in the possibility of finding him. It was weeks before I told Mum.”

1 year later…
‘Dead Body’ Scare at Art Gallery – Hornsey & Crouch End Journal

… Guards were called to investigate a possible break-in at John Jones Gallery – The Project Space when an alarm went off in the exhibition room after closing hours on December 11.

They found no evidence of a burglary but were spooked when their torches shone on the eerie lone figure in the corner of the room. Rather than investigate further they immediately called the police.

Kate Jones, marketing director at John Jones, said: “We had a call to say a dead body had been found in the project space - shocking news which sent us into a panic too. But we were then called back shortly after, by the police saying that they had been in and discovered the figure was not in fact a real man. At which point it dawned on us that what they had seen was in fact a life size piece of art in our current show.”

The piece dubbed “Hug” is dressed in wedding tops and tails and modeled on photographs of the artist Adam James’s father.

A police spokeswoman confirmed they were called to the scene, but then “discovered it was in fact a mannequin”.

Him and Me: Possessing the Dispossessed

“Finding out about my dad’s death caused somewhat of a knee jerk reaction in me. I knew I needed to make work about it, almost unquestionably. I needed to make something that expressed my renewed feeling of closeness to this distant character in my life. It felt wrong to perform as him, but I liked the idea of getting closer through pretending to be him. So I decided to make a statue and cast of myself dressed as he was in a newly acquired photo of him as the groom at his wedding to Tina. I wanted to make a statue that was asleep, possibly drunk, but resting nevertheless, as I now felt he was. I immersed myself in the process and treated the sculpture of HUG as simply another appropriated character. It wasn’t until HUG was assembled and I stood in the gallery with my newly acquainted uncle that I was able to assess how I felt about the experience. Sad, yes. Happy; at the thought of what on earth my Dad would think of me making a sculpture of myself dressed as him.”

-Adam James

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