Jim Dethick was born in rural Derbyshire, England in 1985. He is a filmmaker, artist and musician, whose work across various mediums focuses largely on the handmade and experimental, telling uncommon stories in unusual and imaginative ways. Much of his work is particularly focused on explorations into the juxtaposition of narratives and images set in post-industrial wastelands and unspoiled rural paradises. He creates artworks in a broad range of media, including detailed ink drawing, collage, gouache, cyanotype, acrylic and oils, analogue and digital photography, moving image, and pastels and charcoal. Several of his films are award-nominated, and most have been screened at festivals, cinemas and installation events across the UK for over ten years. In 2014 and 2016 he won two national competitions by the British Film Institute for his original scripts, which he successfully took into production. Alongside film, Jim's artwork has been exhibited and sold at UK galleries and through private commission for over twenty years.
''I am fascinated by expanses of light, land, sea and the basic, natural structural form of the earth: rock, wood, water, fire, smoke, clouds. My current work focuses on these physical formations to explore themes of memory and identity relating to landscape, legends, and distortions of time. In 2020 I began development work on my third feature film, about an archaeologist who discovers mysterious and terrifying wonders in a future dystopia. I amassed around four hours' worth of 8mm and 16mm "found footage" from as far afield as New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, and Eastern Europe, specifically searching for scenes shot in remote, isolated and unusual places, and which could not easily be dated to any year. Some of this footage, occasionally showing brief evidence of where ancient meets modern and the subtle, almost unseeable signs of human existence in an otherwise timeless landscape, inspired a whole new series of drawings. The theme evolved into a collection of archaeological-like uncovered renderings of some long-happened immense catastrophe: desolate wastelands, burnt deserts, ruined cities, destroyed civilizations razed by incredible and violent force and presented in post-apocalyptic, almost otherworldly, hallucinatory images. ''
Toxic Marsh Hallucination - This picture is based on the idea that rancid, stagnant water would create the image of a mountain that isn't there.
