James Winnett about his work:

My work is often concerned with notions of place, borders and identities. I regularly work site specifically in the public realm; in Oxford, Torquay and Southwark I have created interventions which examine the character and identity of a site. I work in installation, video, sculpture, painting and collage using the medium most suited to each context.

Travel is an important part of my work; in Thingvellir and the special relationship, 2008, I travelled to Iceland to create a performative piece filmed in a crevasse of the continental divide between America and Europe.

I aim to make use of the specific context and time that my works exist within; when creating work for a gallery environment, I seek to relate it to what is going on outside of the frame. Much of my work is rooted in current issues surrounding globalisation, migration, sustainability and the environment. It is the tensions and relationships between the local and the global and their interplay with historic notions of cultural identity which drives my practice most.

I often build works out of the familiar and the historical; cultural artefacts, souvenirs, informants of place and identity, are collected and manipulated. I seek to shift understandings of everyday objects, images and places by reconfiguring them either through physical processes, such as collage and painting, or through changes in context, such as in an installation or video. Using these tools I aim to create a theoretical territory born from fact, but inherently fictitious which draws on both the historical and the contemporary to present a context where both can be viewed in a new light. I also recognise the part that humour can play in my work.