Holy Shit, 2024

In my first international residency, at the Berlin Art Institute, I personified my surroundings as a way of combating extreme loneliness. I took refuge in the human touch I witnessed between mankind and its infrastructure. In particular, I observed the communal offerings; a ‘FREE STUFF’ box on WinStraße, someone’s human faeces – punctuated by a Christian wooden cross statue – near Wasserturm (a 19th century water tower once used as a concentration camp), a pink dismembered children’s bike on SkalitzerStraße. A mindfulness returned with me to Melbourne, alongside a commitment to witness these conversations – between my community and its infrastructure. To minimize technical alienation and to offset the soulless corporate burnout I was feeling, I searched for these anti-capitalist, archaeological exchanges. A wilting bouquet of white tulips gaffer taped to a street pole; An unattended, unpackaged and perfectly poised loaf of bread taking its morning commute on the 96 tram; A teddy bear, bolted upright on an abandoned leather dining chair, with its face ripped off. Some observations were unsettling, others exuberant; All I interpreted as bids for connection. Holy Shit celebrates the archeological altars found in urban spaces. More specifically, it demonstrates how the vignettes we leave for each other in urban spaces elicit an embodied sense of belonging, especially in a world that’s increasingly dystopian and technocratic. In making this piece, I contemplated the ethical implications of imposing my stylistically and aesthetically optimistic painting style to these vignettes. Particularly, whether it’s psychologically beneficial to manipulate the ‘affective infrastructure’ I observe as to sooth the collective. In observing this relationship, on this occasion, I decided to present it in jest.

Andie James is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist who works primarily in painting. Motivated by her awareness of how ephemeral life can be, her pieces are deeply diaristic, capturing a moment before it evaporates from the conscious mind.

Her paintings act as altars to elevate the mundane, highlighting the beauty of plain objects obfuscated by the haziness of time. In this way, Andie invites us to reimagine what might have otherwise been forgotten in dreamy technicolour.