Anthony James "Constellations" Oxford Circus - London, opened April 12th.

Installation view, Anthony James, Constellations, Oxford Circus - London, opened April 12th. 

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST April 15, 2021 

  London celebrates its reopening, beginning on April 12^th,  and naturally the art world has joined in, with galleries and auction houses as central to the action. Here you see a single panel from Constellations, a piece by the London-born artist, Anthony James. An expat based in Joshua Tree, Southern California, James, who is primarily a sculptor, working in light, was connected by Opera, his London gallery, with W1 Curates, the public arts specialists. He was commissioned to do a piece, the site being Flannel’s, a high end department store at 275 Oxford Street which likes to use an art element. It’s a site with an interesting history, being the first location of the Marquee, the club which opened in 1958, presented Muddy Waters early and on July 12 1962 the first live gig of the Rolling Stones.

   Last year Anthony James put up Crystal, a standing piece outside Louis Vuitton on Bond Street as part of Mayfair Art Week. “We used algorithms to make the shape,” he said. “It’s about how a crystal grows in the earth.” Crystal was of standard street sculpture size but for Constellatîons , which will be up for three weeks, he has sheafed three stories of the bifurcated façade of Flannels in thirty-three million LED lights, creating a huge thin sheaf of a sculpture, which is kind of a first, I think, and which looks strong enough as an on-line image and which, according to eye-witness reports, is overwhelming on the street. WM