James Rigler

“Ordinary things are amazing: familiar to the point of invisibility, yet charged with significance. We form intimate relationships with everyday things through touch, and every object has its own story, or even a history. Everyday things are as intriguing as ‘important’ objects”.

James Rigler’s work is inspired by the language of architectural ornament, from the most monumental and grandiose of schemes suggesting familiar but fantastical environments, to the most mundane and incidental detail, like municipal fencing. Severed them from their original contexts, and adjusted in scale and reference, the reinterpreted fragments of buildings or statuary - a lantern, a corbel, a segment of wall, a hand  - lose their original intended significance and take on multiple new associations. Whilst retaining a whisper of a reference to function, his sculptures question our perception of our environment as a series of rules and classifications through which we have learned to navigate. Recreating these known forms in ceramics and using a colour palette and scale which resist immediate interpretation, James’s sculptures hover between function and ornament. After studying architecture, James trained and worked as a model and mould-maker at an architectural ceramics firm in Brighton. He graduated in 2007 from the RCA Ceramics and Glass Masters programme and is now based in Glasgow. In 2011 he was commissioned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire resulting in “Chatsworth Table”, and was recently selected by the Duke to exhibit in Perspectives: Patrons and Contemporary Objects” at Contemporary Applied Arts, London. This October he will take up a six-month artist-in-residence position at the Victoria and Albert Museum. James is represented by Marsden Woo Gallery.