Often using discarded or low-stakes materials that I come across, my art practice focuses on being both playful and serious. Juxtaposing the paired-down and the complex in my gestures and actions, I particularly align with Helen Frankenthaler’s sentiment that accidents and chance should be embraced. Whether working with cardboard and spray paint or oil on plywood, I often set up a number of restraints that allow for both exploration and a sense of continuity. I relish the freedom that can be created through self-imposed structures in my process: a limited palette, only one type of brush, or a particular surface to work on. These unplanned encounters can then be carefully balanced with a sense of control and resolution, and through this process of losing and finding, the work at a certain point will often determine itself. There is no hierarchy between the different media I work with, and how they evolve is therefore played out on the chosen surface or material with both an immediacy (in gesture) and slowness (in their resonance).
The works on show at The Chelsea Arts Club are a selection from The Encounter series I and II paired with some of my ‘Quick Sculptures’ which have all been an ongoing project of mine for the last few years. Whether using a soft brush with watercolour and ink on aquarelle paper, or oil on ply, I look for a way of overlaying to both obscure and reveal. Clearly rooted in the language of abstraction, the final pieces are resolved in a marginal place between control and instinct, between the conscious and unconscious. Whilst the scale of the work is small, the gestures and the interaction of colour, and the interplay of the varying marks and brush strokes accumulate meaning and power, and, even within a minimal set of painterly structures, there are no limits to what can happen.
As a teacher of Art and History of Art for nearly 20 years, my teaching has certainly been informed by my art practice and vice versa. I enjoy and am fully committed to encouraging creativity in young people by always championing the idea to engage with what is immediately around you, taking risks and making sure there is an awareness of the context you are working in. Many of the students I have taught have gone onto highly prestigious institutions from UAL to The Bartlett, studying architecture and costume design to animation and filmmaking, and been shortlisted for prizes from the RA to The Sovereign Art Prize. I feel it is vital to make the most of the London’s vibrant Art scene through visits to exhibitions and studios with my students, from Grayson Perry’s recent show at Pitzhanger Manor to a private tour of the late Sir Howard Hodgkin’s studio.
James Bacchi-Andreoli, born in 1977, lives and works in London where he is Head of Art and Art History at The West London Free School in Hammersmith. Having graduated with an Art Foundation from Camberwell (1996), a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths (2000) and an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art (2002), Bacchi-Andreoli has exhibited widely, from Liverpool at 50 MV space to an exhibition in Swansea curated by Turner Prize winner Richard Billingham. He has shown with bodies such as the Contemporary Arts Society and the Arts Council and has exhibited alongside artists including Phyllida Barlow and Michael Craig-Martin.
‘Notations’, a series of gestural linocuts made in direct response to the poems of London based writer James Peake, was featured in the publication NU Review in 2022. James Bacchi-Andreoli was also invited on the panel of judges for the London-based Vanguard Art Prize in association with Camberwell College of Arts (UAL). James Bacchi-Andreoli’s work is currently featured in the Chelsea Arts Club Yearbook 2024.
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A series entitled ‘Notations’, which are gestural linocuts made in response to the poems of James Peake, has been featured in the publication NU Review: www.nureview.org / https://www.instagram.com/nu_review
He has also been on the panel of judges for the London-based Vanguard Art Prize in association with Camberwell College of Arts, which provides a recent painting graduate with a studio for a year and an exhibition at the end.
His work has featured in the Chelsea Arts Club Yearbook 2024 and he had a solo show at the Chelsea Arts Club from 1- 27 October 2024. He is also part of a group show coming up in November at he Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London.
