JIM HOBBS was born in Ohio, USA and now lives, St Leonards-on-Sea, UK and works in London.

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Jim’s work utilizes a variety of media including 16mm film, video, performance, installation, site-specific work, drawing, sculpture, sound, and photography.  Currently his work and research investigate the personal and social implications of loss, oblivion, history, place, memory and the subsequent acts of remembrance/memorialisation.  
 

Black Sun is a photographic still taken from 16mm film. "The sun, from the human point of view (in other words, as it is confused with the notion of noon) is the most elevated conception.”  Georges Bataille, Rotten Sun, 1930.

 

Black Sun’s visual imagery directs a pensive and concentrated gaze at the sun itself, forming a type of melancholic and abstract environment. Staring at the sun has been linked throughout history with notions of unstable mental health, mortality, and depression where this defiant act illustrates the desire to overcome rational thinking and lose one’s self in a temporal paralysis of vision and mind.  Shot in various locations where the sun has a dominating role, the film (and filmmaker) takes this act literally, staring directly into the sun and allowing its strength to burn its presence onto the film. 

 

Recently, the U.S. President and others have suggested unorthodox cures for COVID-19 including the shining of a bright light into the body.  In Black Sun, this concept is illustrated and critiqued through the large scale reproduction of a film still which displays the beautiful and potent power of light.

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Jim Hobbs' solo exhibition Moribund State[s]at Project 78 Gallery (St Leonards-on-Sea) is open until 31/8/20. His recent touring project  (I)MAGESOUND(S) travelled to various venues including New York’s Public Library for Performing Arts/Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center and the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen and his  Jim is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader of Digital Arts at the University of Greenwich and teaches the Expanded Field of Drawing at the Slade School of Fine Art.

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