Category Archives: Exhibition

Thinking Through Cinema (Deep Red)

15 February, 2011

As part of my The Art of Fear post on Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso, I wanted to highlight LUX’s Thinking Through Cinema (Deep Red) that used the film as the basis for commissioned artworks (film, video, and sound) at last year’s Artissima Art Fair.

For Thinking Through Cinema (Deep Red), LUX’s project at this year’sArtissima Art Fair in Turin, Argento’s film becomes a stand-in for cinema as a whole – a starting point from which to explore the differences between film (as a physical medium) and cinema (as the cultural, architectural and social space in which film has traditionally been experienced).

Six commissioned artists – Meris Angioletti, Juliette Blightman, Claire Gasson, Torsten Lauschmann, Nathaniel Mellors and Emily Wardill – will each present their ‘version’ of Profondo Rosso, using Argento’s film as a source text but perhaps without showing a single frame of the original. The artists’ projects will be presented over the course of the fair as part of a rolling programme of timed events, hosted in a specially constructed space modelled on a cinema auditorium, framed within the fair’s ‘House of Contamination’ strand. Thinking Through Cinema (Deep Red) offers an opportunity for artists to completely reimagine cinema – its history, its limits and its untapped possibilities – from the perspective of both creator and audience.

View installation images here.

Image: Still from Clare Gasson’s 7′ (2010)

Yinka Shonibare – Dorian Gray

20 January, 2011

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Horror narratives are cyclical and often self-reflective – evolving from literature to theatre to film and, as I express here on the blog, onto artwork. Bouncing along and between these different mediums means horror continues to generate its relevance and influence. To show how this is true, take my recent Art of Fear discussion about how artwork functioned within the horror of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 2001, British born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare produced Dorian Gray, his first photographic series in which he assumes the lead role. Here, much as in the book and film, Shonibare uses this story as a commentary on Victorian (and contemporary) values of class.

Another stellar example of this is experimental filmmaker Ivan Zulueta’s Frank Stein (1972) which I hope to discuss more in length here soon.

Marnie Weber Interview

3 December, 2010

My interview with the amazing Marnie Weber featured on Lux.

Marnie Weber creates fantastical worlds that, quite frankly, I want to live in or, at the very least, pay a visit. Her atmospheres are an aesthetic mash up of Victorian, 1970s commune, and gritty punk filled with the kind of unsettling creatures that would scare the pants off you if they weren’t somehow totally endearing. Indeed, there is something very magical and intangible about her film, collages, and installations. Weber expresses the theatricality of old Hollywood, bringing forth our own nostalgic tendencies through the expression of death and dreamscapes. Her images are touching, luscious, and melancholic; reflecting another world placed firmly within our own.

For the past six years, Marnie Weber has woven together fictional narratives about the post-mortem adventures of the Spirit Girls, taking us on their bizarre and uncanny journey through the afterlife. Earlier this month at the Mountain View Cemetery & Mausoleum in Altadena, California, Weber put an end to their perpetual mourning and opened up a new avenue for exploration. Eternity Forever, presented by West of Rome Public Art, was inaugurated with a funeral processional and the debut screening of Weber’s film The Eternal Heart where the Spirit Girls, in their last performance, played the live score. This exhibition, which also features a new series of collages, represents the death and re-birth of Weber’s ongoing relationship with her monstrous characters.

CONTINUE READING ON LUX’S WEBSITE

Image: crowd at the Eternity Forever opening.  Courtesy of Marnie Weber and West of Rome.

Get on the Band-wagon: Darren Banks’ mobile cinema

3 December, 2010

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Project essay for Darren Banks’ Palace Band-Wagon at FIAC 2010. Read my interview with Banks on Lux.

Parked in the Cour Carrée entrance of FIAC 2010, Darren Banks’ (UK) temporary horror cinema Palace Band-Wagon brings heyday of the videocassette back to life. This is the ‘mobile cinema’ version of The Palace Collection, an evolving installation that negotiates collective horror history, effects of new technology, modes of distribution, and ideas on the collection. Housed in a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado that comes equipped with a television and a VCR, the public can choose continuous screenings of horror video classics such asEvil Dead, Brain Damage, and The Hills Have Eyes from Bank’s personal collection. This video collection consists of films distributed by Britain’s infamous Palace Pictures in the 1980s and have been tirelessly procured by Banks from Ebay, boot fairs, and charity shops.

Continue reading →

Recent art writings on the Modernist

3 December, 2010

October art reviews on the Modernist…

Oscar Tuazon on the Modernist: Oscar Tuazon’s solo exhibition Sex contains a body of work that re-purposes the functionality of once operational objects into, well, something else. In some ways the work is destroyed, its original intention thwarted. But mainly, Tuazon’s intervention and de-construction of things like his bed, a mirror, and photographs establish a new meaning for these objects…

Move: Choreographing You on the Modernist: The Hayward Gallery’s Move: Choreographing You delivers exactly what the title promises – the audience becomes the players, moving in, on, around, and through a myriad of (mostly) participatory artworks. The traditional relationship between the performers and the audience completely collapses as our hands-on experience not only takes center stage but also quite literally activates the work…

‘Made in China: Ai Wei Wei at Tate Modern’ on the Modernst: The week of art insanity that invariably surrounds the Frieze Art Fair began by walking through a sea of sunflower seeds for Tate Modern’s latest commission in The Unilever Series, Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds…