Catching up with James Stanbridge felt refreshingly like stepping into a retro 1950’s science adventure comic book. He’s one of the twelve mostly idiosyncratic artists contributing to Creative Tauranga’s and Lightwave Gallery’s Bleeding Vinyl Covers Group Exhibition.
This musically themed exhibition, timed to coincide with the National Jazz Festival, was co-curated by Ken Wright from Lightwave Gallery and Angela McKenzie from Creative Tauranga. Album cover art, an important part of our musical cultural tapestry, provided an opportunity for artists to reinterpret a favourite LP cover, using a range of medium such as painting, sculpture, illustration, photography, graphic design and printmaking.
James based his two pieces on Led Zeppelin and it’s clear that his Moby Dick is reminiscent of their debut album cover. James was known as ‘the drawing kid’ at school and tells me he “always planned to be an artist or a scientist.” Growing up in Opotiki, he moved to Tauranga for secondary education, then on to study design. He works with pencil and has dabbled with paint but clearly likes, as he says ‘the particular-ness of illustration’. As a detail-focused person the way he draws does reflect that.
This is his first exhibition of his original art, he is tutoring at Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and he will also be part of an upcoming exhibition at Lightwave called ‘Boys Toys’.
The Bleeding Vinyl Covers Group Exhibition will run until 6th May at Creative Tauranga and then reinstalled at Lightwave Gallery at 30 Totara Street.
The other artists exhibiting are Stephanie Brebner, Clive Armstrong, Nick Eggleston, Ashley Grant, Elliot Mason, Anj Keate, Ken Wright, Lesley Robb, Don Overbeay, Angela McKenzie, and Nicol Sanders-O’Shea.