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Shadows In The Studio

James Phillip Paul Rice

Profile picture of James Phillip Paul Rice

James is a London-based, soon-to-be Glasgow-based multidisciplinary artist and designer from Merseyside. His practice is shaped by honesty, resistance, and resourcefulness, using printmaking, found materials, and experimental processes to amplify stories that are often overlooked or unheard.

He draws heavily from lived experience, their own and others’, to challenge elitism in the art world and spotlight the value of imperfection, labour, and authenticity. Printmaking resonates deeply with his upbringing, embracing mistakes and manual process in a way that reflects working-class creativity: making something powerful out of whatever is available.

His work exists as both a personal and political act. Reclaiming space, questioning systems, and pushing for visibility and equality within creative industries. Above all, he believes in kindness as a creative tool and quiet protest, proving that care and conviction can go hand-in-hand.

James is a London-based, soon-to-be Glasgow-based multidisciplinary artist and designer from Mers...

This project is a visual tribute to working-class resilience within elite art spaces. Using experimental printmaking and phototransfer techniques on found materials like hessian, I reimagine traditional portraiture through a lens of honesty, resistance, and pride. The work features fellow artists and friends, faces that deserve to be seen, recognised, and remembered.

The process was deliberately hands-on, physical, and imperfect, mirroring the reality of being a working-class student navigating the contradictions of privilege and exclusion at a place like Central Saint Martins. Every smudge, misprint and mess was kept in, because perfection has never been the goal. Authenticity has.

This project is about resourcefulness, community, and holding space where space wasn’t freely given. It’s proof that we’re not just visitors in these institutions, we shape them. Even when the systems weren’t built for us, we still show up. We still make it happen.

Final work

A textured, phototransfer image printed onto a rough, woven piece of hessian fabric. The image shows two young people, a man and a woman, s

Class Perception

My final piece is an experimental phototransfer print on a scrap piece of hessian fabric that I found in a charity shop. I deliberately chose hessian for its rough texture and rawness, it reflects both the grit of working-class life and the hands-on nature of printmaking. It wasn’t about creating something clean or polished; it was about honesty, labour, and resourcefulness.

The image I transferred is a found photograph of two close friends and fellow artists, Niamh Quigley and Zach Thompson, both of whom come from similar working-class backgrounds. I wanted their faces to be the centre of the work, not just as a tribute to them, but as a statement: we deserve to be seen. Our stories, our faces, our art, they belong on the wall, on the main stage, not hidden away.

Up close, the piece looks messy, fragmented, even unclear, but as you step back, the image begins to sharpen. That shift mirrors how working-class people are often misunderstood or underestimated, but the full picture is always there if you’re willing to really look. The texture, the imperfections, the wear of the fabric, all of it matters. All of it tells a story.

This piece isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about visibility, pride, and presence. It’s about reclaiming space, about showing what happens when we take control of our own narrative using whatever tools we have around us.

A textured, phototransfer image printed onto a rough, woven piece of hessian fabric. The image shows two young people, a man and a woman, s

Research and process

  • A series of prototypes were I began experimenting with the phototransfer technique that I have established, these depict working class scenes that hav
  • image from the project
  • image from the project

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Shadows In The Studio

This project is a visual tribute to working-class resilience within elite art spaces. Using experimental printmaking and phototransfer techniques on found materials like hessian, I reimagine traditional portraiture through a lens of honesty, resistance, and pride. The work fea...

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