The Sculptor

Greg James, Fremantle scultor works on a wax maquette as part of a life size commission that will eventually portray eight pioneers and the stories at the time of early settlement in the South West of WA. The work will be a significant sculptural placement in Busselton.

Greg James studio is truly one of the most fascinating places to see art in creation in Western Australia. James' sculpture studio and art gallery is located in J-Shed in the west end of Fremantle - in the Arthur Head precinct. If you are in Fremantle I urge you to visit this extraordinary place and talk with Greg about the journey to create the works before a piece of wax is crafted or let alone a gram of bronze is poured.


By photographer John Austin from the sculptors website

"The prime quality of Greg James sculpture is its sense of engagement - the feeling of being in a real presence when close to one of his figurative bronzes. To witness Greg at work is to witness the total engagement he gives to the subject. It is this total engagement with the subject he is re-making in clay that the viewer, and toucher, of his sculpture senses.

This statement may make it sound as though Greg James' sculpture comes totally from within, some sort of spiritual journey. However, the first stage, following the setting of the pose, is painstaking measuring and armature building. This steel armature is the skeletal structure which the entire sculpture hangs upon and is structured with fastidious care, care which ensures the figure is anatomically correct and believable.

Following the armature building Greg molds the figure in clay. The clay is where the presence of the subject is brought to the surface to be finally fixed in Bronze.

To retain quality, all the mold making and bronze casting is done in his Fremantle studio. An amazing range of skills and techniques are crammed into this relatively small space.

In Greg's abstracted figurative work the physical relationships within the human form are retained absolutely. That Greg can form a figure and then abstract it, as in the Iris series and Mist, takes these bronzes beyond a merely modern aesthetics."