James Delaney is a contemporary painter, printmaker and sculptor who works from a studio in Victoria Yards, near downtown Johannesburg, South Africa. He recently won a BASA (Business Arts South Africa) Award for his sculptures installed in The Wilds, a previously neglected park on the edge of downtown Johannesburg which he has rehabilitated.
His work has been shown in over 20 solo and group exhibitions in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Philadelphia and New York. His work is in collections including Merrill Lynch Bank of America, the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the City of Johannesburg.
His interest in printmaking has led him to collaborations with various printmakers, including LL Editions, The Artist’s Press and Artist’s Proof Studio, and Robert Blackburn Print Workshop in New York.
Q > Motivation: What makes you get out of bed in the morning?
A > Breakfast. I’m always hungry when I wake up.
Q > What patterns, routines or rituals define or help to shape your life and its rhythms?
A > Mid-morning coffee and afternoon tea give me time to think and reflect, and so my day stops for them — no matter where I am in the world. Meditative exercise is a daily ritual too, but sometimes it gets waylaid by digging and planting in The Wilds, which is physical so that’s OK. Aside from those little bits of structure, the rhythm of my days is varied — drawing, collaborating on a project, printmaking in someone else’s studio, walking the city streets, reading, travel.
Q > Something few people know about you?
A > I had the same kind of tumour which killed Steve Jobs. It’s rare and hard to detect, and I had an even rarer type, called a pro-insulinoma, with an incidence of 1 in 10 million people. It was removed about 10 years ago, but I’m left with a strong discipline of healthy eating.
Q > The hardest thing you’ve ever done?
A > Survive the insulinoma. I had to keep eating, to keep my blood sugar levels above the level where I’d slip into a coma, and then I started getting seizures, and it all got pretty edgy. I spent time in ICU in various hospitals while doctors did all sorts of tests.
Q > Give an example of something that frightens you.
A > Jumping off high things. I like heights and climbing, but not jumping.
Q > How does where you live affect your work?
A > Hugely. I was born in Cape Town and people often ask if as an artist I wouldn’t rather live there, it being such a beautiful place and all. But Joburg has played an increasingly big role in my artwork — its light, landscape, architecture and history all feed into my work. It kind of came together when I started working in The Wilds six years ago, as that combines so many aspects of the city in one place. It’s on the original gold-bearing ridges, it’s all indigenous plants, it’s historic and at an interesting meeting place of the inner city and the suburbs. It triggered my development of sculpture for specific sites, which has now expanded into a big part of my work.
Q > What’s the most satisfying part of your creative process?
A > Sometimes I’m working in The Wilds and I hear a kid scream with excitement, and I know that means they’ve spotted a sculpture. Some are hidden, and adults tend to look straight ahead and not notice, whereas kids take in more of the environment around them. Technically I suppose this is after the creative process, but for me they are now living in the landscape, and sometimes I move them or change their colours.
Q > Share some of your biggest influences or main sources of inspiration.
A > That’s a hard one to answer as I don’t understand how my brain works. I give a lot of time to observation, and some to reading and engaging with others, and somehow my brain connects things together and they become an idea. It might take time. My brain is quite a busy place.
Q > Why do parks matter?
A > Because they enable people to disengage their brains and bodies from the urban world, and engage with nature, which I think is a primitive instinctive human need. The Wilds is particularly good in this way because it is such a wild space (it’s not a manicured park at all). The natural world puts the chaos inside our brains into perspective, which is deeply calming, and somehow reassuring. I often see people in The Wilds walking alone, which is probably the best way to experience it. In quietness and solitude.
Q > When should a private citizen step in to transform a public space?
A > It requires some sensitivity, as public spaces belong to everyone (rather than a parks authority, who just manage it). My experience was to start very slowly, observe how the plants responded, then see how people responded, and then expand from there. The Wilds is a big project — 40 acres, 8km of stone pathways, an incredible plant collection which had become overgrown and consumed with weeds. I only started with the sculptures after three years, because I recognised that I needed to engage a wider base of people to get over their fear and support my work to restore the park, and sculptures gave me a visual tool to attract their interest.
Q > What role can art play in making spaces feel more welcoming and safer?
A > The sculptures in The Wilds achieved several objectives: they attract visitors (more visitors makes a space safer), provide focal points for social media images, and make destinations within the space — I use them to activate parts of the park which aren’t being explored or cared for. I’ve installed 100 now, and they have come to define areas of the park and get people to move between them.
Q > Describe what you hope or want The Wilds to be like in 10 years’ time.
A > To be one of the world’s great urban parks, and to inspire others to fix up more parks and wild spaces.