Speers’ work draws on the look and feel of urban civic and commercial environments (the super mall, glass curtain wall corporate atrium, prefabricated car park) where the trade-off between luxuriousness and functionality results in cool, sanitized, mediated sites of consumption and transition.

His structures allude to traditions in social architecture – particularity the autonomous zones of meeting places, waiting areas, retail palaces. He draws on both the materiality of these sites and the way in which they determine social interaction. Speers offers us a more open experience, we are lulled into a laconic reverie bathing in palid, soft-focus glows, only to be awoken by a puzzling conflation of disparate associations. We are not presented with a singular narrative, rather evocative fragments collide and layer; iridescent accents haunt and tease.

Jim Speers is based in Auckland. He studied 1988-92 at Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury University.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Ghost Trail Services, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Ludwigsburg, Germany (2005); One Good Thing about Music Martina Del Ray, Jensen Gallery, Auckland (2003); Friday Night Social, Jensen Gallery, Auckland (2002); Brazil is Fine, Jeffrey (Frances Hodgkins Fellow), Hocken Library Dunedin; Forrester Gallery Oamaru; Snow White Tan, Jensen Gallery, Auckland; Tiffany's Kyoto, Artspace, Auckland (all 2001).

His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions within New Zealand and abroad, most recently: Remember New Zealand, curated by Tobias Berger, 26th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo,
Brazil (2004); Gridlock: Cities, Structures, Spaces, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2004); Light Scape, Art & Industry Urban Arts
Biennial 04, Christchurch and Everyday Minimalism, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland.