James Cauty

Born in 1956, Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool. He is best known as one half of the hit-making duo The KLF, as a co-founder of The Orb and a leading innovator in the birth of the ambient house genre and as the man who burnt one million pounds.

Typically known for his iconoclastic and topical ‘stamp art’ that takes the form of real stamps, first day covers and limited edition prints. In 2003, he produced the limited edition ‘Black Smoke, Stamps of Mass Destruction’, a print series which was the focus of huge media attention (featuring on the front page of the Times). These prints were eventually withdrawn after the Royal Mail threatened him with legal action.

In 2004, Cauty installed a gift shop, Blackoff, at the Aquarium Gallery, based on the government’s ‘Preparing for Emergencies’ leaflet. The installation included ‘terror aware’ items, such as ‘terror tea towels’, ‘attack hankies’ and ‘bunker-buster jigsaw puzzles’. He commented: ‘The gift shop becomes the place we can explore our branding ideas, cash for trash — it represents the futility and the glory of it all.’

In October 2008, Cauty opened an exhibit at the Aquarium entitled ‘JCauty&Son’ in which, in collaboration with his teenage son, Cauty produced work across a range of media that highlighted the violence present in cartoons. Twenty-five percent of the proceeds went to Amnesty International. In June 2011 he held a public exhibition at L-13 entitled ‘A Riot in a Jam Jar’ consisting primarily of a series of scale dioramas depicting violent confrontations between British rioters and police, each contained within an inverted glass jar.

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