Gate Picturehouse, Notting Hill

VIDEO ART IN THE CINEMA:  28 November 2007 8:15 pm
 
Paulette Phillips, Suky Best&Rory Hamilton
Paulette Phillips The Floating House 2002                                 Suky Best & Rory Hamilton Wild West 2005
 

Programme:

NICKY COUTTS   The Discovery of Slowness: An Attempt at Disappearing

HEATHER & IVAN MORISON   Dark Star

SUKY BEST & RORY HAMILTON   Wild West

DOUG FISHBONE   Towards a Common Understanding

PAULETTE PHILLIPS   The Floating House

DAVID BLANDY   The Five Boroughs of the Soul


 

Nicky Coutts lives and works in London. She completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art, London. In 2007, her work was included in North and South at the Millais Gallery, Southampton and The National Glass Centre, Sunderland. The Discovery of Slowness: An Attempt at Disappearing (2007), was made during an English Heritage Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship in 2006/2007. The work references the life of John Franklin who died trying to find the North West Passage through the Arctic ice.

Heather & Ivan Morison live and work in North Wales. In 2006, they were part of the British Art Show 6 and were commissioned by Situations, Bristol and by Platform for Art, London in 2007. They currently represent Wales at the Venice Biennale. Dark Star documents the artists' search of America for the original nomadic groups of people who travelled through the States in house-trucks made from felled timber. The animated, ominous crystalline forms that hover above the barren landscapes of Quartzsite, Arizona, cast a flickering shadow over the many house-trucks, caravans and everyday detritus.

Suky Best & Rory Hamilton's collaborative animations take archetypal scenes from classic cowboy movies and remove everything but the silhouette of the hero (and his horse) in order to explore his mythic status and the filmic structures that support this. Wild West was part of Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain 2005. The artists are currently working on a new animation, Rodeo, to be launched in April 2008 at Danielle Arnaud contemporary art.

Doug Fishbone is an American artist living and working in London. He earned an MA in Fine Art degree at Goldsmiths College in 2003 and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004. Fishbone’s video and performance work was included in the last year’s British Art Show 6. In 2007 his live performance was shown at the ICA in London, and group exhibitions will be held in Switzerland, Japan, and Korea. A narrative filled with bizarre anecdotes and filthy jokes, homespun proverbs and strange social analysis, Towards a Common Understanding (2005) investigates the culture of media saturation which confronts the contemporary attention span at every turn.

Paulette Phillips' film installations construct uncanny experiences that amplify our attachment to voyeuristic pleasure, narrating observation through the use of classical film techniques. Recent group exhibitions include: The Power Plant, Toronto; ZKM, Germany; Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; Heidelberger Kunstverein, Germany, Ludwig Museum, Hungary and the Palazzo della Papesse, Italy. Reviews of her recent work can be found in Art in America, ArtForum, Modern Painters and Flashart. She has worked in theatre, film, and television and teaches at The Ontario College of Art and Design. She is now showing at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. The Floating House (2002), a video of a startling image of a house cast adrift on the ocean, is a testament to loss. A house floating on water rather than being securely tethered to the ground is an unsettling experience increased by the soundtrack which features voices of a family gathering.

David Blandy lives and works in London, using video, performance and comics to address how identity is constructed. Blandy has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad at venues such as at Gasworks, London; FACT, Liverpool; PS1 Gallery, New York; and the Centre d'art Contemporain, Geneva. The Five Boroughs of the Soul (2004) was commissioned by Grizedale Arts as part of Romantic Detachment at PS1, New York. Integrating real life and virtual adventures and donning the orange robe of a Buddhist Shaolin monk with a portable record player in hand, the Lone Pilgrim searches for the places that have associations with soul songs in New York.


Wednesday 28 November 2007, 8:15pm
£5 / £3 (Concessions)


Gate Picturehouse Cinema
87 Notting Hill Gate London W11 3JZ
0871 704 2058
www.picturehouses.co.uk