The bytes of data that bombard our email inboxes are largely a waste product of the digital age, and as such, computerized guardians end up accumulating these images in our junk mail folders. These messages are largely ignored, often deleted, and certainly an irritant—but not to artist James Howard.Howard reappropriates these emails into artwork instead of releasing them into the wastelands of the web. When sorting through his junk folder, he produces collages of text and images that he finds there—much like Warhol and Lichtenstein reappropriated the imagery of pop culture before him—turning spam into gaudy fantasies, hacking, copying, and changing the insecurities that these emails play on in Photoshop. The final product presents images with the amateur aesthetic of the early internet, and the desperate promises of spam are turned into darkly humorous nonsense statements.Wild Biology Smell, 2011
Bacteria Everywhere, 2011Calm Time, 2011Shape Theory System, 2011Reconnecting, 2011Desire Meets RealityHoward’s work is currently on exhibition at the Aubin Gallery in London.Images courtesy of James Howard.
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