JAMES CAUTY
making mischief in the
Artytechs Parlour

Born Liverpool in 1956, James Cauty is one of the most uncompromising multimedia artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. His career has encompassed performance art, publishing, graphic art, graffiti, painting, finance, film, television, acoustics, popular music, mechanics and massive scale pranksterism. Cauty's career began at the age of 17 when he drew a print inspired by Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". It swiftly became a best seller, with some 6 million copies circulated worldwide. It is still available today. Shortly after this he launched a music career. As a guitar player he joined tribal funk band Brilliant. Through this connection he met Bill Drummond, and the pair formed one of the most successful art-music collaborations of all time: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMS) and then The KLF. They released seven consecutive Top 10 singles and five hit albums. Focusing on the dance/ambient genre, Cauty and Drummond produced a soundtrack for a generation and an attitude for the eternal. Equally well known and appreciated were the truly subversive campaigns that accompanied these projects. Giant subvertisements in the national newspapers and grafitti on south London tower blocks implored the public to "SHAG SHAG SHAG" and "ABANDON ALL ART NOW".

During this period Cauty also found time to establish the ambient music group The Orb with fellow artist Alex Patterson. In 1992 The KLF won a prestigious Brit Award "Best Band" Trophy and feeling that The KLF had achieved its purpose the mission was terminated the following day. KLF RIP. Cauty and Drummond returned in 1993 with The K Foundation. Ostensibly set up to benefit young artists, the agenda was slightly more prosaic: to cause a sizeable paradigm shift in the rarefied fine art world. The first move was to create The Other Turner Prize aka The 1994 K foundation Award. Forty thousand pounds sterling was to be awarded to the worst new British artist. Rachel Whitread (who had coincidently won that years 'real' Turner prize) was handed the cash on the steps of the Tate Millbank. She took it.

In high summer of 1994, inside an abandoned boathouse on the island of Jura, The K Foundation immolated £1 million as a deliberate act. Much has been written about this action. Suffice to say it did happen and it was beautiful. The establishment hated it, the public were confused… but some found it to be a glorious moment in art history. The act spawed a video installation work, in addition to Cauty’s other film-based work for The KLF. In 1995 they formed a plant hire company and to this day Cauty and Drummond are still working together as Directors of K2 Plant Hire Ltd, and are involved from time to time in various low profile art projects. Next move for Cauty (now based in Brighton) was "Advanced Acoustic Armaments", a wheeled device that detonated seemingly harmless acoustic bombs upon unsuspecting impressionable youngsters at pop festivals. He then created a series of massive canvas work: "Deep Shit" depicting the last 1000 days of The JAMS (later destroyed). A further set of large scale paintings are studies of landscape and auto-destructivism (also scheduled for imminent destruction). In 2000 Cauty commenced remix work for artists including Marilyn Manson, Placebo, Hawkwind and U2 etc.

2003 sees Cauty and fellow experimental artists launch The Blacksmoke Organisation - described as "a multimedia art collective dedicated to the propagation of audio visual noise" (and focusing somewhat on issues of global environmental concern). Blacksmoke output includes original images, video and artwork material, alongside select remixes for artists sharing their passion for experimental artwork. Blacksmoke images have appeared on the cover of various national and international newspapers and magazines. The debut Blacksmoke audio work was a track entitled "Silent Night" in memory of 9-11 (the MP3 was downloaded by over 10,000 people in just 24 hours). This was followed by a session on BBC Radio 1 and remixes for select artists including The Dandy Warhols, Cradle of Filth, The (International) Noise Conspiracy and Jerry Garcia etc.

The Aquarium Gallery in London, England. New audio, image and video work is planned for 2005 to co-incide with a relaunch of the official Blacksmoke website at www.blacksmoke.org