Flesh Car Valet S03 ‘don’t get your hopes up’ artworks.

James Hornsby’s work emerges from the manic temperament of our digital age. His photographs are drenched in high-fructose Candy Crush colour palettes and congested with synthetic pattern and texture. They describe a comprehensive fantasy world populated with radioactive flowers and digitally mutilated youth. He creates his pictorial mutants through a combination of traditional studio photography techniques and anarchistic post production. This ‘misuse’ of his craft subverts the slick aspirations of advertising photography, and undermines the capitalist narrative that self-expression must have market value. Hornsby’s work recalls the schizophrenic subjectivity of communication technologies, and his dystopian visions illuminate the collective mental distress of our time.  

Complete project essay by Julia Scott-Green