The young English scene arrives at Mains d’Œuvres with a selection of never-before-seen films, imported from across the channel.
Come, sit down and relax, it’s for your eyes only.
exhibition June 16th - 28th 2009
Opening reception Tuesday, June 16 > 8 PM – Midnight
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is an exhibition of films by young artists from the UK. Come, sit down and relax, it’s for your eyes only.
Mains d’Œuvres dedicates its last exhibition of the season to the moving image. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is an exhibition which takes about an hour of your time : it’s like watching a film. Mains d’Œuvres’ exhibition space has been transformed into a cozy mini home cinema, taking its audience on a journey into the British contemporary art scene.
Compiling a selection of short films made between 2000 and 2009, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY slips in just about everywhere : it wanders through the streets of London, lingers on the platforms of train stations, explores the construction sites of urban refurbishment, shops at Harrod’s and tears down advertisement billboards. The artists of the show are conducting investigations of all sorts. Among them is Sam Curtis who documents the eccentric and baroque displays of fish and seafood in Harrod’s luxurious market. Ben Judd discretely films train stations looking for trainspotters, a community of people who stay all day on platforms waiting for trains to arrive. Among all the artists who will participate in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, the mission of the CutUp Collective proves to be the most extreme. This anonymous London collective hijacks the urban landscape by tearing down advertisement billboards, cutting them into bits, and then pasting them back up to create new surprising images.
Since the 1990s, a great network for the production and distribution of artists’ films has developed in the United Kingdom. Producing about ten films a year, Film and Video Umbrella has developed important film projects for artists such as Gillian Wearing, Daria Martin and Matthew Buckingham. Founded in 2002, LUX is probably the organization of greatest international recognition, with a collection reaching over 4,500 films from the 1960s until today. In 2003, a year after LUX was established, Tank Magazine launched its website Tank.tv, an online gallery which curates nearly eight exhibitions of films a year, all accessible for free on their website.
Artists : Sam Curtis, CutUp Collective, Michelle Deignan, Katie Davies, Ben Judd, Claire Hope, Heather Phillipson, Laure Prouvost...
These two projects are curated by Florence Ostende.
Florence Ostende is a curator and art writer based between Paris and London. She has organized the exhibitions “Retracing Exhibitions” (Royal College of Art, London, March 2009), “Les Enfants du Sabbat 10” (Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers, March 2009) and “Argument de la Diagonale” (Bétonsalon, Summer 2008). She is currently finishing the Curating Contemporary Art program at the Royal College of Art (London) and is working with London-based art writer Coline Milliard on Catalogue, a bi-monthly web-based contemporary art magazine designed to act as a platform for the British and French art scenes. The first issue will be available in September 2009 at www.cataloguemagazine.com