Elysium Gallery presents 13 fabulous short films from 12 international artist film makers ranging from Swansea to New York to Holland to Newport.
This is the second leg of Bus Stop Cinema following on from its screening at the Hay-on-Wye festival in June. This exhibition will be traveling over to Venice in September.
Featured Artists and films:
Lyndsay Foster – Dress, Cover, Interval, Distance
Dress, Cover, Interval, Distance places the marching attempts of the youth close order drill organisation Buecorps against some of Norway’s most beautiful and prized art pieces at the Bergen Art Museum. The film sets out to address individuality within the confines of modern societal structure. Symbols of authority juxtaposed to reveal uncertainty. Each subject was asked to march for the camera in front of their chosen painting for 7 minutes.
Foster was born in Seattle, Washington and currently lives and works between Seattle and Los Angeles. Her work has recently been shown at The National Centre for Contemporary Art – Saint Petersburg, Russia; Kinipsu Gallery, Norway; Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; the 700IS Film Festival, Iceland and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Jayne Wilson – All That Mighty Heart
All That Mighty Heart takes its inspiration from the site of a former Victorian waterworks and borrows from the pictorial language of instructions and the lyricism of post war public information films to lull you back to an era of industrial engineering. You applaud the imagined Central Office for Clock Time Expansion, who invites you in this short film to consider the fundamental elements and qualities of mechanical engineering, and their capacity to act as an antidote in a fast moving life where time is a commodity.
Wilson’s solo exhibitions include Recollect: Drawn from Site, The Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry (2008), Now You Can Pick Up Anything, Phoenix Brighton and City Gallery, Leicester and Domework, Work from the redevelopment of Brighton’s historic Dome Theatre, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.
All That Mighty Heart is Wilson’s first short film and is funded by Arts Council of England.
James Johnson-Perkins – Štúrovo Super Hero Society
The Štúrovo Super Hero Society was created during a 6-month residency with the Bridge Guard Residency Program in Štúrovo, Slovakia. During his residency Johnson-Perkins created a fictitious group of amateur Eastern European freedom fighters. Every character has a super hero persona and mask. They each have special powers and individual characteristics, some of which are derived from Hungarian and Slovakian unique cultural identities. The film soundtrack is a commissioned violin piece created by Palkó Trencsík. This was recorded with Hungarian and Slovakian cartoon overdubs and atmospheres by music producer Yomakomba.
Selected exhibitions include Toyota Museum of Modern Art, Japan, Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Glasgow and The Royal College of Art (RCA), London.
Jacob Dwyer – River Of Mud
River of Mud: “I fiddled around in my pocket for something or other and ended up pulling out a 1000 Kenyan shilling note. Kenyatta’s beard was recreated in such detail. I read somewhere that if you put it up to a map of Kenya it traces every river and estuary in the country.” (River of Mud, 2011)
These words are narrated over scanned Kenyan currency. They fit into the overall investigation as to why, in 2010, the Kenyan cyclist, Zakayo Nderi, got off his bike and jumped into the river Garonne just before he was about to win stage 18 of the Tour de France. Poetically sifting and selecting public and personal events from the past Dwyer combines fact, fiction and memory to build an engaging narrative. This narrative changes imperceptibly and crucially needs to be watched from start to end to be understood.
Dwyer was born in London, is a graduate from Newcastle University, curator of We Cluster and We Stick Together at Chelsea College of Art in 2009 and recently showcased River of Mud at the Bus Stop Cinema @ the Hay–on-Wye festival. He also informs us that he likes rap music and the Tour De France amongst many other things.
David Theobald – Greensleeves
Greensleaves: ‘Today, location is not so much defined by geography, but by our position within the complex web of processes that make up contemporary society. My work attempts to capture such a situation, caught in a perpetual state of transit where increasing complexity is often presented as the illusion of progress’
Theobald’s recent exhibitions include this year’s Tenderflix Film Festival, the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Creeskide Open 2011, Re: Animate at the Oriel Davies Gallery, the Cube Open 2010, After the End, Elysium Gallery 2010, the Celeste Art Prize 09 in Berlin, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008 and was also winner of the Creekside Open 2009 selected by Mark Wallinger
Thomas Canning – FOTO
Foto: Adam finds a mysterious roll of film. Its pictures show him committing terrible acts.
Are they evidence, or fakes? As he searches for answers, he becomes unsure of the truth.
‘I seek to make people question aspects of their reality, such as morality. I want to show that these are learned concepts, not absolutes. That right and wrong, like ‘the truth’, are subjective.’
Canning is a British filmmaker based in London and Foto is his debut as a writer and director. He has recently shown at The London Short Film Festival, The Rome International Film Festival, won ‘Best Thriller’ at the Limelight Film and Arts awards 2009 and was a finalist in the Aesthetica Magazine short film competition.
David Marchant – Loveboat
Love Boat blurs boundaries between reality and non- reality. The doll in the video comments on prostitution not only literally but metaphorically; questioning our current day condition. The male running and hiding character – Skinny, trying to escape the situation of which he is part. The Masks which are apparent facades are a direct comment on our post modern condition and suggest the artists struggle to escape conditioning and to touch on what is real within our environment.
‘The work poses questions about seduction, the blurring of boundaries, manipulation and the loss of the real, challenging the man-made environment …. we don’t think in stills we are video’
Marchant is a Swansea based artist and selected recent exhibitions include the Summer show at the Royal College of Art in London, If you Build it they will come, G39 in Cardiff, My Place, Oriel Myrddin Gallery and Auxesis at Tactile Bosch in Cardiff.
Hazel Gore – Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy is about a young woman who is traumatized by an event which has taken place in her life: someone close to her left when she was a child and has never returned. The narrative highlights her disturbed subconscious state as she struggles to cope with reality and her destructive way of coping. The story unfolds when she receives a letter she believes is from the absent person.
Gore’s recent exhibitions include In Time, London, New Contemporaries Show, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh., Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh, and The Compass Festival of Lunacy, Bristol, where she won BEST FILM AWARD.
Melvyn Williams – Downfall: Jaffa Cakes And Downfall: Self Service Tills
Downfall: Self service tills and Jaffa cakes: The Downfall parodies have become a staple of youtube over the last year or so. They are a fantastic platform for all sorts of expression from the deeply political to the ludicrously comic. The inherent tension in the clips, because of their obvious historical significance, gives them a comic turbo boost.
‘They say that comedy is all about timing but the same seems to be true for drama. The downfall clips are rich with long pauses, meaningful glances and a deep seam of sub text just waiting to be mined. The variations on the theme seem to be endless and endlessly funny. In addition to this, making the 20th century’s most iconic monster look ridiculous is also pretty good for raising a laugh.’
Born and raised in Swansea with a brief period abroad, in Newport (Gwent), to study Film and Television Practice, Williams has been making films for the past 20 years having written four feature length screenplays and numerous short films, had a half hour comedy broadcast on HTV Wales and been a writer for the Sooty show!
Shabnam Piryaei – Dollhouse
Dollhouse: We witness the devastating aftermath of war in a powerful film that integrates original music and poetry. The main character is full of fear and alone in a surreal and disturbing environment exposing human vulnerability on an epic scale.
‘ Whether through a character’s apprehension, or the development of a melody, or the way a poetic verse can undress the hidden and implicit circumstances that lie outside of the frame, through this film I wish to draw attention to our deepest commonalities as part of the human community.’
Piryaei was born in Iran and raised in the U.S. and is a published writer. Her collection of poetry entitled ode to fragile was published by Plain View Press in 2010. Her short films, based on scenes and poetry from her book, have been screened in the U.S. at the Woodstock Film Festival, Indie Spirit Film Festival, Miami Short Film Festival, and internationally at the Canterbury Short Film Festival and Portobello Film Festival.
Elina Medley – Interior. Day
Interior. Day studies a particular space and is the result of an obsessive recording of light, sound and surface. As the title suggests, the piece is set inside and explores ambivalent feelings towards domesticity and the home. Partly about routine and the banality of day to day life, we hear the sounds of human activity: Hoovering, typing, running water. This reference to daily actions and its endless loop means that the work explores themes relating repetition and the continuous cycle of domestic work.
Medley is a Finnish artist based in Oxford and recent exhibitions include 700IS Reindeerland Experimental Film Festival in Iceland and Short Shorts, New Briggate Gallery in Leeds.
Sean Vicary – Re – Tolled
Re-Tolled was developed after watching the daily destruction wrought by a large green field supermarket development near Vicary’s studio in Cardigan. RE-TOLLED draws upon the imagery of the Mari Llwyd and other Welsh folk ritual in an attempt to manifest the ‘spirit’ of the land.
‘As trees are felled and the landscape altered, the reverberations are felt deep in the earth, disturbing creatures that are now only remembered in folk memory.’
Vicary is a moving image artist based in Aberteifi, West Wales. He originally studied painting, graduating from Newcastle Polytechnic but became increasingly seduced by the possibilities of working with time based media.
His work has been broadcast in the UK and exhibited worldwide.
‘Lament’, a new work supported by Animate Projects and Arts Council Wales, will examine ideas of longing and belonging in the Welsh borderlands. It will premiere online during December 2011 followed by an exhibition at Oriel Davies, Newtown in February 2012
Private view / Golwg Breifat
Friday 19th August 2011 7 – 9.30PM
Gwener 19fed Awst 2011 7 – 9.30YP
Exhibition continues until 3rd September 2011
Arddangosfa yn parhau tan 3ydd Medi 2011
Open Wednesday – Saturday 12 – 5PM
Amserau agor Mercher – Sadwrn 12 – 5YP
Admission free / Mynediad yn rhad ac am ddim
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