Jim Ricks is an American–born Irish conceptual artist, writer, and curator. He has exhibited throughout Ireland and internationally, including a number of public art projects.[1][2]
Ricks's work utilises appropriation, institutional critique, politics, and humour.[3][11] He has had solo shows in the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Mexico.[12]
In an ongoing body of work, "Jim Ricks has developed the method of synchro-materialism as a means to consider the territory where art meets capitalism", and he has used this methodology in exhibition, performance, and print since 2010.[16][17] In 2015 he travelled to Afghanistan to make Carpet Bombing, a large traditionally made carpet featuring imagery of military drones – an updated version of Afghan's war rugs.[18][19] He participated in the 2017 Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.[20]
"We need to start thinking more creatively about public art. Jim Ricks has. Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen... is a commentary on our past, our present, the concept of “brand Ireland” and the very idea of public art; and everyone is invited to bounce. A temporary, movable, witty, interactive, contemporary public artwork we are all invited to play with? [Alice] Maher has endorsed it as “the best public art piece...ever”. She might just be right."[24]
Ricks is working on the long-term, global public art project In Search of the Truth (or En Busca de la Verdad ). It is a collaboration with Ryan Alexiev, Hank Willis Thomas .[27][28][29]The New York Times writes: "The “Truth Booth,” a roving, inflatable creation, in the shape of a cartoon word bubble with "TRUTH" in bold letters on its side, serves as a video confessional. Visitors are asked to sit inside and finish the politically and metaphysically loaded sentence that begins, "The truth is …"".[30] The project has travelled Ireland, Afghanistan, South Africa, Australia, the United States, and Mexico,[31][32] recording and then exhibiting the thoughts of many people on the subject of truth in several countries.[33][34][35]
Sesiones Publicas, San Agustín, La Lisa, Cuba, a LASA project, August 2017.[37]
Museum projects
Ricks was invited to participate in a 2 year project called Sleepwalkers (2012–15) at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. He was one of six artists invited to use the museum's resources, in an "unusual experiment in exhibition production".[38] Ricks's contributions included a tribute to Richard Hamilton (artist), unauthorized exhibitions, his solo show: Bubblewrap Game: Hugh Lane, 2013 – 14, and a closing event which included James Barry in 2014.[39][40]Aidan Dunne of the Irish Times describes Ricks's participation as a "curatorial process of selection and validation, making a museum within the museum comprising works from the real collection, artworks borrowed from elsewhere, non-art objects from flea markets and a commissioned copy of an Ed Ruscha painting."[11]
He exhibited at the Trotsky Museum in Mexico City in 2022.
