James Lemon: Resurrection

Stephen Todd takes a deep dive below the gloopy, viscous surface to unearth the origins of James Lemon's bold, brash, ‘metamagical’ totems.

By Stephen Todd

A gaggle of garrulous totems are arranged haphazardly across the gallery floor, their gloopy, tumescent surfaces at once inviting and repelling, the very viscous glamour of them beguiling. Artist James Lemon admits he wants the viewer “to be a bit confused” by his “functionalish” sculptures and I’ll admit he’s got me there. Mostly they’re composed of refired bricks poised upright to form elemental pedestals atop which perch bulbous vessels that appear simultaneously proud and imperilled. Lemon refers to the formation as ‘a forest’ and, if so, it’s one of those dark ones in which strange beasties abound and into which children have a habit of disappearing. Looked at it in this forest light, these functionalish (for now it’s a word) sculptures seem to allude to tombstones and funerary urns, those cupped vessels that fit so snugly in the hand and would amply accommodate the ashes of one or two small beings.

James Lemon you are a winner, 2023 kiln brick, glaze and ceramic 46 x 23 x 12 cm

Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis

The pieces are, in fact, ‘dancing around death,’ says the artist. “Symbolically, in their formal references, but also materially, in the process of making them. I’m fascinated by what’s known as ‘dunting’, the cracking that occurs as an error in the firing process that leads to the piece collapsing.” So fascinated is Lemon that he provokes the erroneous effect in order to celebrate and elevate imperfection. His is a delirious kind of wabi-sabi. “I fire each piece several times, opening the kiln door sooner than I should which causes the vessels to collapse. It basically fractures the piece. And then I capture that fracture by refiring it.” At the same time, he believes

…there’s a certain amount of sacredness about them, stemming from this idea of birth, death and resurrection.

If Lemon’s language references the religious that’s likely due to a Pentecostal upbringing in his native New Zealand. As a young boy he was drawn to performance, to theatre and to music, but found his outlets stymied by the conservatism of the church. “I left as soon as I could, fleeing to Australia age 18 with basically no money, no skills, barely any education. I was liberated, at least geographically, and determined to make something happen.” He got jobs in hospitality, made friends, “began dating a guy who was a potter.” Waitering at night, he spent his days experimenting in the tiny home studio: throwing, hand-building, wheel-turning. “I’m not good at boredom. I was attracted to ceramics because it drew my attention to so many locations around the studio where lots of different processes were involved.” Ultimately, the pleasure of working with clay “…is that it’s one of the most fundamental materials around,” he says. “For me, it was initially a really physical response. It was the tactility. As my curiosity deepened, I became intrigued by the lineage of objects, this kind of constant brewing and bubbling.”

James Lemon, Selected works from Sphexishness, 2023

Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis

He uses the term ‘sphexishness’ to refer to his process, defining it as ‘mindless, routine behaviour.’ But it’s behaviour that, in the case of sphex (great golden digger) wasps, results in exquisitely complex, sturdy nests in which the bodies of paralysed victim insects are stockpiled to feed their larvae. The term was coined by the American scientist and scholar of comparative literature Douglas Hofstadter in a September 1982 Metamagical Themas column in the Scientific American journal. Metamagical–‘questing for the essence of mind and pattern’–seems an apt term to apply to Lemon’s work: pregnant with meaning that’s more imputed than imparted; allusively gorgeous; fascinated with the glamour of decadence. “My focus on these objects is intense but kind of blurred,” he says. “I like them to incarnate a sense of mystery and intrigue.”

James Lemon classic objects, 2023 kiln brick, glaze and ceramic 23 x 30 x 34 cm

Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis

While Lemon may conceive the series as a forest, you can still see the individual trees. At their most basic, you could say ‘this one’ is a vase, ‘that one’ is a side table. “While I’m comfortable with suggesting function, I don’t think the objects live or die by what they’re able to do or not do,” he insists. “That said, there is definitely power in the purely decorative aspect to them. It brings me back to a reflection on the Rococo where it's like just the most lavish, ridiculous objects.”

James Lemon ashez 2 ashez, duzt 2 duzt, detail, 2023 kiln brick, glaze and ceramic 46 x 23 x 23 cm

Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis

He makes a quip about ‘awful art for awful people’ and I happily lean into that, since I am the proud owner of a Lemon piece from 2022 titled Time To Die 2. Composed as a kind of triumphal arch–one horizontal, triple-fired brick laid across two crazy-glazed vertical ones–topped by a vessel shaped like an inverted hive (très sphexish!) – it is furiously self-possessed, an indomitable presence in my living room. Sometimes, for a giggle, I pop a flower–a peony, say, or a gladioli–in its bowl.

The frisson of impossible fabulosity is sublime.