Bio

Statement

Some Components of a Critical Practice (April 2011).  My art practice is an investigation into four interweaving elements: 1) the experiencing of objects, interiors and the mediating processes of the cinematic apparatus framed by the genre of still life and its art-historical, cinematic and social contexts; 2) the dialectics inherent in the moving image, e.g. stillness and movement, truth and fiction, presence and absence, abstraction and figuration etc.; 3) digital media and the consequences of the abstract-image, i.e. the effacement of difference, the intermedial image, the recuperation of the haptic void and the relevance of a medium-specific discourse; 4) the politics of focus arising from the perceiving triumvirate of camera, eye and mind that extends to the unknowing observer, the practices of looking and the engagement with art history as a concept.

 

About

My name is Jonathan Thomas and I live in Treforest, Wales.  You can get in touch by emailing me at cinemametafisica@yahoo.co.uk.

Aswell as my art practice, I am co-director of DecemberLab – an artist-run, non-profit organisation that supports, promotes and develops artists’ moving image through production, exhibition, dialogue and education. I also teach avant-garde cinema at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries as a visiting lecturer and develop media content for distance learning at the Faculty of Advanced Technology, University of Glamorgan. 

I have 12 years’ community arts experience running video, animation and music workshops and have studied Media Production at undergraduate level and Moving Image at postgraduate level. My video work has been shown nationally and also in Europe and North America, and my music has aired on national radio and television. 

In my spare time I enjoy quality time with my wife, reading, going to exhibitions and chinwagging over a pint.

 

Videography

  • Composition, 2011
  • Modern Beauty I, 2011
  • Untitled (Cubomania), 2011
  • Frame Work, 2011
  • Tabletop Pan, 2011
  • Three Times Three, 2011
  • Photosynthesis (Study for Modern Beauty), 2011
  • Light/Switch (Study for Modern Beauty), 2011
  • Hang Up (Study for Modern Beauty), 2011
  • Sixteen, 2011
  • Deleted Scene, 2010
  • Wyndham, 2010
  • Lighting, 2010
  • Bottle and Glasses, 2010
  • Period Piece, 2009
  • The Living Room, 2009
  • Interiors, 2009
  • Dressing Table, 2009
  • Forgotten, 2009
  • Time, 2009
  • Futility, 2009
  • Nausea, 2008
  • Melancholy Objects, 2008
  • Nothing Became The Universe, 2007