UNSPOOLING – ARTISTS & CINEMA
Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK
Until 9 January 2011
UnSpooling – Artists & Cinema, is a large and ambitious group exhibition that straddles two giant bodies of reference – art and cinema – showing 19 international artists:
Michaël Borremans, Cartune Xprez, David Claerbout, Sally Golding, Ben Gwilliam & Matt Wand, Roman Kirschner, Kerry Laitala, Wayne Lloyd, Sheena Macrae, Elizabeth McAlpine, Juhana Moisander, Alex Pearl, Greg Pope, Mario Rossi, Gebhard Sengmüller, Harald Smykla, Ming Wong and Stefan Zeyen.
The artists' featured present current reflections and interpretations of cinema and new possibilities of future cinematic production, spectacle and storytelling; and gathers a wide range of works that use or abandon the usual conventions of cinema, such as celluloid, digital video, motion, and time. Cinema is explored in an alternative range of artistic strategies, through sound, chemistry, gesture, spoken-word, painting, drawing, and sculpture.
This exhibition includes a number of new commissions that cut to the heart of cinema bringing out its hybrid anarchistic side, these include Stefan Zeyen's site-specific fly-poster piece Weekend (2010); Alex Pearl's lo-fi film series, Pearlville (2010); Wayne Lloyd's spoken-word and drawing performance, Hell is a City (2010); Juhana Moisander's series of uncanny video interventions; and Mario Rossi's new restaurant canopy, Thief of Baghdad (2010).
Alongside these, cinema gets a great deal of recycling and rehashing by acclaimed Singaporean artist Ming Wong, in his 'world cinema' piece, Life and Death in Venice (2009); Elizabeth McAlpine's Hyena Stomp (2006); Sheena Macrae's remix of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in Odyssey (2006); and Gebhard Sengmüller's installation Slide Movie (2006).
Elsewhere, artists unite themselves with the cinematic more readily including Harald Smykla's Movie Protocol series; Roman Kirschner's Roots (2005-06); Michaël Borremans' The German (2004-07), and David Claerbout's Bordeaux Piece (2004).
A live event saw the cinematic explode from fixed and flat screens, which featured leading exponents in live, expanded and improvised cinema, including Ben Gwilliam & Matt Wand's, Sally Golding, Kerry Laitala, Greg Pope with Lee Paterson and Cartune Xprez.
Publication
This exhibition is accompanied by a publication that includes texts from the curators, plus contributions from Prof. Steve Hawley (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Dr. Janet Harbord (Queen Mary, University of London). Available online from Cornerhouse Books at www.cornerhouse.org/books
Online
Hear from the curators, follow discussions on future cinema featuring critical texts by Daniel Miller, Laura Allsop and Eliza Tan, and get a real insight into this exhibition through videos, audio and interactive features.
Visit the dedicated microsite: www.cornerhouse.org/unspooling
Produced by Cornerhouse in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices (AND). Curated by Andrew Bracey & Dave Griffiths.
Exhibition supported by Austrian Cultural Forum, The Finnish Institute, Finnish Embassy, The Flemish Authorities, FRAME, MMU, University of Lincoln, The University of Manchester (ICP/RICC) and City Inn, 52 Princess Street and The Manchester College.
Galleries Open:
Tue-Sat: 12:00 – 20:00
Sun: 12:00 – 18:00
Galleries also closed: Fri 24 – Sun 26 & Fri 31 December
Galleries open from 12:00: Mon 27 & Tue 28 December
Cornerhouse
70 Oxford Street
Manchester UK, M1 5NH
www.cornerhouse.org/unspooling
W www.cornerhouse.org
E press@cornerhouse.org
T + 44 161 200 1500
Image Credits: Mario Rossi, "Thief of Baghdad," 2009. 35mm slide. Courtesy of the artist.
