Starting with Why So Quite Child in 2000 the installations become increasingly complex involving both interaction with physical and digital elements. While some works manifest as fully digital outcomes (Float) the sculptural sense of space and movement is maintained. More often there is a marrying of these realms in works where the distinction between them is minimalised through the sculptural sensibility.
The openness to embrace the audience as a participatory element of the work can been seen in work form the 80s (or even student work from the 70s) as much as it can been seen in early childhood exposure to happenings of the 60′s in Europe. While in this way the body of the audience and artist occasionally becomes performative the work seldom becomes performance. Occupying the interactive space between objection and action the participant serves simply as an actuator within the works.
While Charlton had undertaken some collaborative work (Prop) in the 1990s these had been more discursive in nature. The technical demands of these recent works and a conceptual interest in locating process as central to his practice has seen an increase in collaborative projects across a broad range of both gallery, situational and applied context.
Trojan Square.
pp. was a series of annual events hosted by Ian Jervis,Christopher Braddock and James Charlton. The series of exhibitions showed three artists in three venues for three years 1998 -2000. A total of 36 exhibitions. The exhibitions were accompanied by a series of catalogues and documented on a now obsolete website.