9/1/2015
Grace Schwindt
Site Gallery, Sheffield
The exhibition presents an installation film that examines the radical left-wing politics of Germany in the 1960s-70s, taking an interview with a former activist taxi driver as the starting point.
Our 2015 exhibition programme opens with Grace Schwindt’s feature-length film Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society, an installation co-commissioned by Site Gallery. Grace examines the radical left-wing politics of Germany in the 1960s-70s, taking an interview with a former activist taxi driver as the starting point. The driver’s words and memories of his politically-active student days form a dialogue that the artist weaves through a theatrical setting, drawing on costumes, props and performers to question political ideologies and to ask if we can truly be free. The film examines the notion of freedom: how it was, and is understood, and who, if anyone, can really access it.
Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society is commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; Eastside Projects, Birmingham and The Showroom, London in association with Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, Bath; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Tramway, Glasgow and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp. Supported by Arts Council England, Hessian Film Fund, and Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Grace Schwindt (b. 1979, Germany, based in London) works with film, live performance and sculpture. An MA graduate from the Slade School of Fine Art, 2008, key projects have included participation in the Associate Artist Programme at LUX Artists Moving Images,2009; solo exhibition at White Columns Gallery, New York, 2010; performance at The Signal, South London Gallery, 2011; feature length film Tenant, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and at Wiels, Brussels, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Void Gallery, Derry. Schwindt participated in a one year artist in residency programme at Wiels in 2012 and recently in one month residencies at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow and Hospitalfield Arts in Arbroath.
Image: Grace Schwindt, Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society, 2014. Cropped still from HD video
Press Contact:
Eleanor Bryson, eleanor.bryson@sitegallery.org
Opening: Saturday 10 January, 1pm:
Grace Schwindt in conversation with Site Gallery Artistic Director, Laura Sillars
Site Gallery
1 Brown Street
Sheffield
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 5.30pm