In the early 1960s Anthony Caro led a revolution in sculpture in Britain. His abstract steel constructions, often painted in bold colours, forged a new and internationally influential sculptural language. In the years since his fertile and diverse practice has consistently challenged and extended what sculpture is, and what it might be. At the age of 80, Anthony Caro remains intensely active, working each day in his studio and overseeing every detail of an extensive retrospective at Tate. Preparations for the show are featured in this profile, along with many of his major works, filmed in Britain, Germany and the United States.
An essay film exploring the relationship between humans and propaganda, spanning from the enslaved individuals of 16th-century Saint-Domingue to the digital 'Sisyphus' role embodied by NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in the popular video game, Assassin's Creed.
Three spectacular canvases by Sandra Blow were one of the highlights of the 2006 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Sadly, this was her last show, as she died in August that year. This film was made in her studio in St. Ives as she was preparing to submit her works, and it captures her remarkable character and her fascinating reflections on a lifetime creating beautiful, rigorous, distinctive and joyous paintings. Sandra Blow spent a formative year as a student in Italy in the late 1940s, and she returned to London to begin a distinguished career dedicated to developing her vigorous abstract art. In addition to paint, she worked with a diverse range of materials, including sacking, plaster and coloured paper collages, and while her work often referred to landscape and to architecture, it was always exploring ideas of pure form and colour, balance and chance, light and movement. theEYE is an excellent introduction to contemporary artists and their work
Hamish Fulton describes himself as a “walking artist”. For more than thirty years he has undertaken demanding walks in many parts of the world, and drawn on his experiences to create distinctive artworks using text, graphics and photographs. He aims to “leave no trace” in the landscape, and he acknowledges that his art cannot represent the experience of a walk. “What I’m interested in,” he explains, “is presenting a sort of skeleton of something, and then the viewer fills in what’s missing, maybe from your own experience.” Although they exhibit a striking consistency in their concerns, Hamish Fulton’s artworks can exist as large-scale wall paintings and as modest publications, as graphics to compete with advertising hoardings and as online animations. They are informed both by spiritual ideas and by political questions prompted by our uses of the environment and by specific issues such as land rights.
Gillian Ayres studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1946-50, before running the AIA Gallery with painter Henry Mundy whom she married. As a young artist in the 1950’s, Ayres was closely involved with leading British abstract artists including Roger Hilton. Ayres was quick to respond to European tachism and American abstract expressionism, creating a body of work that placed her in the forefront of her generation. In the sixties she was the only woman artist to be represented in the important ‘Situation’ exhibitions, showing large paintings combining oil and paint that aimed for the sublime using very radial drip and pour techniques of action painting.
On April 20th, 2008, carried by a tremendous popular support worthy of the greatest South American revolutions, Fernando Lugo, the "suspended" bishop, is elected president of the Republic of Paraguay. After sixty years of absolute power, the Colorado party is compelled to accept the changeover of political power. This documentary will enable us to discover the scarcely known country nestled deep into the heart of the South American continent, its unique social structure, its painful past and its surprising identity. By listening to the newly elected president, to his deposed Colorado opponents, to the specialists of the history of the country and to the people itself, they will help us understand why the Paraguayans, after so many years of dictatorship and unopposed governing, have entrusted their destiny to a free man: a religious figure who threw himself into the political arena to try and rescue his country of crime, injustice and poverty and to restore democracy.
Lisa and Sasha live together, but due to the tension of staying in war-affected Kyiv, Lisa wants to move abroad, and Sasha has to accept the inevitable changes in her life: the departure of her friend and the forced move to her new own rented apartment.
Evy and Quiti share with us the remnants of their relationship as they navigate their lives in solitude. They are the last two inhabitants of a ghost town in the Sonora Mountains, in northern Mexico.
Gavin Turk is a leading figure in British contemporary art. His 1991 degree show work Cave, a blue ceramic plaque commemorating his occupancy of a studio, and Pop, the waxwork figure of himself as Sid Vicious, are among the iconic artworks of the 1990s. His “self-portrait” signatures and his finely crafted sculptures of everyday objects (such as cardboard boxes cast in bronze) bring the commonplace into an art space and challenge the viewer to engage in new ways.
Ian Davenport’s 48 metre-long painting Poured Lines transforms the tunnel beneath a railway bridge in Southwark, close to Tate Modern. The painting’s numerous vitreous enamel panels were created in a German factory where they were baked at fearsomely high temperatures. This film follows the artist as he creates this remarkable public artwork.
Pleasures of the eye, David Hockney’s work has shown him to be one of the most versatile and influential artists of our time. The British artist invites the observer to take a visual stroll through his paintings and explore the dimensions of time and space. In communicating a new sense of the spacetime continuum, he injects the medium of photography with entirely new and living components. His sensuous theatre sets make us hear music with our eyes and see colours with our ears. The documentary filmmaker Gero von Böhm paints a memorable portrait of a fascinating artist, whose work allows all of us to see the magic in the small and seemingly insignificant details of everyday life.
Life and art intersect on a spectacular Newfoundland farm where visual artist Colette Urban mounts thirteen art performances in the fields and barns of her property. Resilient, determined, self aware and funny, Colette embraces the transformative power of art as she restages the significant art performances of her thirty-year career. With the camera as her audience she transforms the quotidian into a playful world of the imagination with elaborate costumes and idiosyncratic self invented rituals.
While the rural polyphonic songs of Georgia (Caucasus) are internationally appreciated and have become a national symbol, the urban instrumental music of the eastern part of the country is less well known. The Georgian duduki, a double-reed wind instrument of the oboe family, is known by different names in neighboring countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. In the 19th century Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, had a large multi-lingual population composed mainly of Georgians, Armenians, Azeri and Kurds, who practised and listened to duduki music. Traditional duduki music, performed by a soloist, a drone player, and a doli drummer who is also a singer, is derived from Middle Eastern styles and repertoires. Georgian musicians in the 20th century developed westernized local styles recalling the famous three-part polyphonic rural singing.
Four women, four stories: Anissa, Fatiha, Malika and Sarah share in intimate portraits their journey of practicing the youyou or zaghareed, the cries of joy and emotion that women express in North Africa and West Asia. Through their life stories, interspersed with songs and personal narratives, they express the strength they draw from their voices and the legacy they carry with them.
Allison and her friends decide to kidnap a local unionist chav, after he rigs the local bingo hall, and sends Allison's Grandmother to Hospital with a panic attack.
A soviet cosmonaut is sent to space. Successive failures cut him from its base. Condamned to die, he meets, Laika, a cosmonaut dog who died a few years before him, who came to accompany him to the afterlife.