The Rise and Ruin of Power: James Powditch’s Empire Fall
Image credit: James Powditch in his studio. Photo: Steve Siewert
The first work in the series, USA (Camelot), was conceived in July 2023 as the 2024 US election loomed. At the time, Powditch wasn’t sure if it would be a one-off. But as Trump re-emerged into the mainstream with renewed force, the myth of Kennedy’s so-called golden age became a spark. Powditch, who grew up idealising America from afar, found himself reckoning with a more corrosive reality. “Trump probably manifests the cold, hard reality that was always there,” he writes, “just hidden by American mythmaking and the self-delusion that the US was a force for good in the world.”
That disillusionment set the tone for the works that followed. Across pieces referencing empires including Japan, Greece, Belgium and Britain, Powditch draws parallels between the hubris of history and the fractures of the present. Each composition is layered with a treasure trove of details, pulling together text fragments, historical references, flag colours, and the relics of past lives. His studio, crammed with materials gathered over decades, becomes a staging ground for this visual archaeology.
Powditch says. “Sometimes the connection between objects used is purely aesthetic; colours, shapes, etc. Other times it’s thematic connections, a book page on a subject that fits with what I’m working on.” In Greece (Demokratia), 2025, we can see the curves of the timber’s relationship to ancient Greek helmets, whereas others pull text directly from history or are reminiscent of prominent flags such as Japan (Empire of the Sun), 2025.
Image credit: James Powditch, Greece (Demokratia), 2025, mixed media, 92 x 62cm (box framed). James Powditch, Japan (Empire of the Sun), 2025, mixed media, 92 x 62cm (box framed). Photo: Mike Buick. Courtesy of the artist and Nanda\Hobbs Gadigal Country/Sydney.
The results feel part-film, part-memoir, part-warning. A self-described “mad film nut,” Powditch admits he’s a “frustrated filmmaker who makes artworks in lieu of making movies.” The cinematic influence is overt, not only in the poster-like scale and typographic punch of the works, but in their narrative compression; many mimic opening credit sequences, cut-up, fragmented, suggestive, hinting at a drama still unfolding. “Propaganda too,” he notes. “The power of an image to create a reality.” It’s a fitting irony that these deeply analogue works critique a hyper-digital age where a single image or phrase can rewrite public sentiment overnight.
Despite their historical sweep, the works in Empire Fall are ultimately about now: the disintegration of democratic norms, the fragility of institutions, and the speed at which seemingly fixed truths can unravel. “I don’t know that they’re warnings,” Powditch reflects, “but they should remind us that history repeats. That no empire, no matter how permanent it seems, will always fall and another will fill that vacuum.” The US, in this schema, is just the latest in a long line.
Empire Fall feels especially urgent. The historical collapses it references are not distant, they are mirrors. And as the US teeters on the edge of democratic unravelling, Powditch’s works seem to shudder with the weight of what’s coming. “Honestly,” he says, “it did feel ludicrous to be in the studio, putting these things together in an obsessive way, whilst the world falls apart.”
Still, there is beauty here: in the precision of the compositions, in the interplay of materials, and in the idea that from ruin something meaningful can still be constructed. Each salvaged object carries a story, some of which are known only to Powditch himself. Yet, he is happy for this to be sacrificed to build a new narrative.
With over two decades of practice behind him, and a track record that includes nine Archibald Prize selections and twelve appearances in the Wynne Prize, Powditch has built a career on dissecting the interplay between politics and image, fact and fiction, culture and collapse. Empire Fall is not just a continuation of that inquiry; it’s a crescendo.
It’s a show about endings, yes, but also about the delusions that delay them, the symbols that outlive them, and the artists who see them coming.
James Powditch’s Empire Fall is showing at Nanda\Hobbs until August 9 2025.
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