Abstract
Collection of essays by Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin, Bridget Crone, Adam Pugh, and Lucy Reynolds, exploring ideas around artists’ film and video in relation to their exhibition. These essays were commissioned by Dr Anya Lewin and Dr Kayla Parker (editors) in response to the Gallery in the Cinema initiative at Plymouth Arts Centre, led by its artistic director Ben Borthwick, which presented a programme of eight artists’ moving image works (listed on page 2) shown in the Centre’s cinema on a daily loop between 2016 and 2017. The exhibitions were placed between gallery exhibitions and the Centre's feature film programme and gave artists the opportunity to show moving image works, which are often shown in a gallery environment, in a small high spec cinema space.
Lucy Reynolds draws on the expanded cinema and “film sculpture experiments” of Filmaktion and others in the Structural film movement of the 1970s to move beyond the constraints of single screen mainstream cinema. Her essay, ‘Expanding Cinema: The Promise of the Gallery’, traces a trajectory from these histories to the contemporary gallery installations of Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho and works by Pipilotti Rist.
Adam Pugh’s essay, ‘Back to the Future’, critiques the polarization of cinematic culture that locates artists’ moving image at one end of the spectrum and mainstream film at the other, arguing that cinema needs to be a site of plurality that offers “unexpected encounters and unknown pleasures”.
In ‘Curating Sensible Stages: Fabulation and an Artists’ Cinema’, Bridget Crone discusses the relationship between audience and moving image artwork—and the “space of encounter”—and reflects on what constitutes artists’ cinema both within and beyond the gallery.
Artist duo Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin’s collaborative performance essay, ‘Repeatable Viewings’, critiques the variety of contexts within which today’s artists can present their film and video work, evaluating the role of curators, reviewing the venues, the composition of audiences and the milieux.
We offer these essays both as exploration of the critical landscape for understanding contemporary artists’ moving image practice, particularly the modes of exhibition and reception, and as a way to mark Gallery in the Cinema, which unfortunately ended with the closure of the arts programme of the Plymouth Arts Centre due to the loss of Arts Council funding.
Lucy Reynolds draws on the expanded cinema and “film sculpture experiments” of Filmaktion and others in the Structural film movement of the 1970s to move beyond the constraints of single screen mainstream cinema. Her essay, ‘Expanding Cinema: The Promise of the Gallery’, traces a trajectory from these histories to the contemporary gallery installations of Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho and works by Pipilotti Rist.
Adam Pugh’s essay, ‘Back to the Future’, critiques the polarization of cinematic culture that locates artists’ moving image at one end of the spectrum and mainstream film at the other, arguing that cinema needs to be a site of plurality that offers “unexpected encounters and unknown pleasures”.
In ‘Curating Sensible Stages: Fabulation and an Artists’ Cinema’, Bridget Crone discusses the relationship between audience and moving image artwork—and the “space of encounter”—and reflects on what constitutes artists’ cinema both within and beyond the gallery.
Artist duo Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin’s collaborative performance essay, ‘Repeatable Viewings’, critiques the variety of contexts within which today’s artists can present their film and video work, evaluating the role of curators, reviewing the venues, the composition of audiences and the milieux.
We offer these essays both as exploration of the critical landscape for understanding contemporary artists’ moving image practice, particularly the modes of exhibition and reception, and as a way to mark Gallery in the Cinema, which unfortunately ended with the closure of the arts programme of the Plymouth Arts Centre due to the loss of Arts Council funding.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Plymouth |
| Publisher | University of Plymouth |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Sept 2020 |
Keywords
- artists' moving image
- artists' film and video
- cinema
- exhibition
- expanded cinema
- moving image artwork