Memory isn’t something we keep.
It’s something constructed.





Memory isn’t something we keep.
It’s something constructed.







MEET THE ARTIST

James Bourbon is a self-taught visual artist based in Meanjin (Brisbane). He works across painting, collage, textiles and installation. He has shown work across Australia and internationally, including London, Tokyo Sydney, Melbourne and Chicago.

His practice sits at the intersection of popular culture, consumerism and collective memory. He is drawn to the images that move through us quietly, the advertising, the propaganda, the mass-produced vernacular that shapes what we believe without ever asking permission.



"My work begins in the past, but it is always about the present. Each fragment becomes a way of asking how culture leaves its mark on us."







EXPERIENCE

Places my work has been shown




ABOUT THE WORK

My practice is driven by a specific obsession. How consumerism and popular culture shape our everyday lives without us being aware.





Research

The work begins in archives of discarded magazines, propaganda leaflets, comic books and advertising clippings, building a personal collection of imagery that has been forgotten, overlooked or written off as trash.



Collage

Fragments are cut, selected and collaged into new compositions. This is where the archaeology happens, where unrelated images from different eras and contexts are placed together and start to reveal something.


Paint

The collages are painstakingly rebuilt in paint. The stark black-and-white style deliberately echoes the texture of photocopies and cheap print, stripping images back to their raw graphic core.




















Every image you've ever seen has left a mark.
I’m here to reclaim them.














© James BourbonTop