Guerin Projects Presents James Vaulkhard at British Art Fair

Guerin Projects will present a solo exhibition of James Vaulkhard at British Art Fair this September.

Guerin Projects Founder Marie-Claudine (MC) Llamas will present a solo exhibition of artist James Vaulkhard at the British Art Fair in September. British Art Fair is one of the leading fairs for Modern and Contemporary British Art, and returns to the Saatchi Gallery between 26 to 29 September, 2024.

Llamas recently presented a critically acclaimed James D. Kelly’s photography at Photo London, which generated much praise in media including The Times and The Guardian, and her presentation of James Vauklhard’s enigmatic paintings and drawings at the British Art Fair promises to be an equally hot ticket. Guerin projects will exhibit a curated selection of new oil paintings and drawings inspired by Vaulkhard’s life in Nairobi, Kenya, where he spent his childhood and formed life-long relationships with the local people and a love of nature and the Kenyan landscape. Highlights of Vaulkhard’s new work that will be exhibited at British Art Fair include a large-scale portrait of a fisherman Vaulkhard has known since his childhood, as well as paintings and drawings of the Kenyan coast and landscape, and an enigmatic painting of a canoeist on Lake Naivasha in Nairobi, all captured in a fauvist, Post-impressionist palette, with a hint of magical realism and influences of Peter Doig and Matisse.  

James Vaulkhard: “In my recent series, one observes a profound entanglement with the characters of my formative years and the vivid essence of a landscape that is inextricably tied to my identity. These paintings transcend mere representation; they become vessels of memory, spontaneous yet deliberate tributes to the intricate interplay between nature and the nuanced tapestry of human relationships.”

Kenyan-born artist James Vaulkhard had a classical training as a portrait painter in Florence, Italy. His aesthetic roots lie in the realm of classical oil painting but he is perhaps best known for his modern multi-media approach to portraiture, particularly in the medium of collage. His contemporary works seek to address and respond to various issues of the zeitgeist. Vaulkhard blends a traditional artistic foundation with contemporary experimentation, and his artistic practice blends past with present, tradition with innovation, inviting viewers to pause and reflect upon the beauty that permeates both the natural world and the human experience. Vaulkhard’s star is truly in the ascendant, and he was named as ‘the artist to watch’ by The Gentleman’s Journal in 2018’. 

Guerin Projects Founder MC Llamas is rapidly making a name for herself as a star curator of the next generation, and prominent figure on the contemporary art scene, with acclaimed exhibitions over the past decade including "A Comfortable Man" by Chas Smash at Wiltons Music Hall and "The Power of She" at Bowman Sculpture. 

Marie-Claudine Llamas: “I have been working with James for years and I have been a witness to his masterful growth from Florentine representative way of painting, to an abstract, emotional one. His use of color now is deeply symbolic and filled with vulnerability. His work is extremely generous, and is the result of arduous technical and emotional trials.” 

Vaulkhard is deeply involved in the community and has set up an artist residency in Nairobi, where he is involved in a conservation project to protect the land from developers. 

His work emerges as an amalgamation of classical techniques intertwined with experimental visual expressions. It is through the utilisation of bold, assertive colours and meticulously crafted processes that he ventures into the abstract domains of nature. This approach does not merely depict, but rather, it interrogates the intrinsic complexities and subtleties found within the natural world.

The Guerin Projects exhibition at British Art Fair will feature 4 large-scale oil paintings and around 15 chalk pastel drawings, all spotlighting the natural beauty of Nairobi and  capturing some enigmatic characters from the local community. 

James Vaulkhard: “‘The peculiar nature of the universe lies in its fleeting physical manifestation, existing solely in the present moment. In my recent series, I find myself entwined with the echoes of my youth and the vibrant essence of a land intrinsically linked to my being. These paintings serve as vessels of memory, spontaneous tributes to the interplay of nature and the delicate tapestry of relationships. Through them, I endeavor to capture the ephemeral beauty of the past, forging a bridge to the present with each artwork.

For Vaulkhard, the endeavour to capture the ephemeral beauty of the past is not simply an exercise in nostalgia, it is a sophisticated attempt to forge a tangible bridge to the present, encapsulating the transient yet impactful moments that define our existence. Each artwork presented at British Art Fair is a testament to the fleeting nature of time, articulated through a dialogue between colour and form that is both evocative and intellectually stimulating.

About James Vaulkhard

James Vaulkhard holds a BA degree in History of Art from Leeds University, and has both trained and taught at Charles Cecil Studios and Studio Della Statua in Florence, Italy. Here, he gained a formidable reputation for his ability to embrace and manifest traditional techniques in both portraiture and sculpture. Notably, upon his graduation in 2013, Vaulkhard was commissioned to participate in a bridge project between Italy and Kenya, developing the preliminary studies for The Sacred Heart Cathedral Kericho in collaboration with local Kenyan sculptors.

In 2014, Vaulkhard relocated to London and continued to develop an artistic style that reframed his classical training and moved towards a more experimental category of visual expression. His first work to be exhibited in London was a series of collage works featuring seven representations of the fictional hero James Bond comprised of found erotic and pornographic imagery. In the wake of the success of that series he created a series entitled Icon that employed the same techniques. This included his acclaimed unauthorized 2017 portrait of then-President of The United States Donald Trump, created from cuttings of historical dictators and political tyrants.

In 2019, Vaulkhard returned to his roots in oil painting, creating a large-scale series of dystopian landscape paintings entitled Echo Chambers–a collection of algorithm-inspired 'cave-paintings' that posed questions about human identity in an era that the artist suggests may prove to be the dawn of guided evolution. These abstract forms blended a primordial past and potential future, depicting fingerprints and crude depictions of beasts veined in algorithmic code.

In his most recent work, Vaulkhard has combined techniques developed in both these series of works and married them to the aesthetic arena of Japanese art, specifically addressing the mysterious concept of Ma or negative space. The result is a series of abstract landscapes intended to draw the viewer deeper into nature via an overwhelming visual cacophony that seeks to communicate the vast potentialities that exist between the elements.

James Vaulkhard’s paintings are illuminations of hope, they lead us to a potential for growth that sheds light on a flourished future. The artist draws inspiration from the Japanese theory of MA, coordinating the literary concept with a prodigious knowledge of Florentine classical canons of depth, embodied by shadows, reflections and light.

James has been developing this body of work over the last two years, drawing his inspiration from landscapes in both Singapore and Kenya. The works are best described as dreamscapes, in the most noble sense of the term: they are landscapes mused from memories.

His works echo an abstraction that can be found in Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Similarly to the French artist, James’ works capture a constantly changing natural light and colour, which dissolves all spatial cues and where adjacent elements intermingle. Each painting is a token for a balmy meditative moment. The physical occurrence of water lilies also reflects upon a peaceful overtone, describing an ascension from the worldly to the spiritual. Vaulkhard’s works are an omen that touches on metaphors of the living and the lost.

James propositions the viewer with a rediscovery of the meaning of space, how it is occupied and how it overflows with the weight and light of the ethereal. The works are a portrayal of our geo-psyche. He manifests hidden spirits and makes them reappear as bloom on the canvas.

His oeuvre shows us that nature is abstraction. Foliage is a palette for the artist to play with and the patterns in verdure are the stencils of the human spirit, constantly repeated and adapted to the canvases of our lives. These carvings of nature lead way to negative spaces charged with even more abstraction: "the silence between the notes which make the music”.

In his most recent body of work, James develops on his approach to the concept of MA, he talks about the legacy of the forest surrounding his home in Kenya. His work has strong visual refences to Peter Doig and David Hockney. His use of colour is emotional, as opposed to being a representative one. His use of purple hues are echoes of nature and the memories which it holds. James’ palette tells a different story to the one which can be seen in his compositions. The hues are evocative of memories, they aren’t descriptions of nature, but of the nostalgia which it conveys. Similarly to Doig, James is a voyeur to his environment, a painterly novelist of the sceneries surrounding him.