James Capper was born in 1987 in London. He completed a BA Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2005 - 2008). Subsequently, he has gone on to study MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London 2008- 2010. In 2009, he was appointed a bursary member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. …
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James Capper was born in 1987 in London. He completed a BA Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2005 - 2008). Subsequently, he has gone on to study MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London 2008- 2010. In 2009, he was appointed a bursary member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.
Capper's work has featured as part of the Peckham Pavillion at the Venice Biennale (2009), the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2009), where he was awarded the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture jointly with William Tucker, RA, and at the Jerwood Space, as one of the shortlisted pieces for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2009). His work, including Ripper, has also been featured in Bold Tendencies, an annual exhibition of outdoor sculpture, at the Hannah Barry Gallery (2007-2009) and the Oil Fields, also at the Hannah Barry Gallery (2009). His recent solo exhibitions have included 'James Capper at Wieden & Kennedy' (2008) and 'James Capper: Drawings for Machines' at the Hannah Barry Gallery (2008).
The machine aesthetic and mechanical processes are central to Capper's work. He is particularly interested in the contributions to engineering made by Robert Gilmour Le Tourneau, who, in the early 1960s, developed a number of experimental and prototype earthmoving machines. Le Tourneau's innovations often form components of, or inform the aesthetics of, Capper's works.
Capper has recently begun to separate his works into two series according to process. The first of which is his 'floor-marking' or 'markmaking' series. All of the works in this series sit upon skid plates (a Le Tourneau development) and drag themselves along to mark the earth's surface. The second series of works are his 'carving' or 'shaping' machines which typically effect some sort of modelling action, albeit often in crude form, onto a material of some sort (i.e. plaster, dirt, clay, etc.).
