Ford sits in his studio, attempting to chip a tiddlywink into the lens of an upright video camera. Having not played the game since childhood and having no measure of his own skill or the difficulty of the task, the duration of the film was unplanned, only that it would end when a tiddlywink filled the lens.

About James R Ford

James R Ford (b. 1980, UK) studied at Nottingham Trent University and then Goldsmiths College in England. He moved to New Zealand in 2009 and currently lives and works in Wellington.

He has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and internationally, and in 2013 was winner of the inaugural Tui McLauchlan Emerging Artist’s Award from the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.

In 2014, Ford published a book of selected works, with accompanying texts, interviews and essays from 2008-2013, entitled Fail Better.