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James Stephen Wright is a multidisciplinary artist and AHRC doctoral researcher based in the North East of England. Their practice operates at the intersection of new media, extended reality (XR), and open data, exploring how digital interventions can reframe our relationship with cultural heritage and the natural environment.
Currently undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the University of Sunderland and the National Trust, Wright’s research investigates inclusive models of sustainable engagement through socially engaged art and technologies. This practice is informed by an enquiry into the relationship between nature and science, the tropes of the Anthropocene and space exploration, as well as the complexities of algorithms and quantum theory.
A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Edinburgh, Wright has exhibited nationally and internationally, and was previously awarded a prestigious year-long fellowship at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bavaria. Their projects span immersive installations and speculative narratives, exploring how physical place and virtual space intersect to shape new forms of experience. Using digital performance and installation, Wright creates active sites of enquiry to test how we embody and understand complex ecological systems in a data-driven world.
Selected exhibitions and live shows include ˈbər-b(ə-)liŋ
performed live at Middlesbrough Art Weekender 2022;
(nɑnkəˈmjuːnɪkəbəl) performed live at GoMA in February
2022; Donor at GENERATORprojects Dundee in 2021,
Anecdotes from The Abyss, in collaboration with George
Finlay Ramsay, FuturShock, FOLD London/ Lahmacun
Radio Budapest in 2021; dualisms_oo, Internationales
Kunstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg, (DE) in 2019; A
Skulk in London, London Nights Late at the Museum of
London in 2018; Haha C’est La Vie at Cabaret Voltaire
in Zurich during Manifesta in 2016; Acclimation of dark
respiration at the Voidoid Archive in 2015; Book of the
Dead, A Museum for an Imagined City, Soil Seattle, USA;
The Maillard Effect at Drap-Art, Festival of Recycling
Art in Catalonia in 2014.
Previous scientific collaborations include ASCUS
Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, Asteria Space
Art & Research Group, The UK Centre for Ecology &
Hydrology.
