Duane Hopkins
dal 15/3/2009 al 28/3/2009
Segnalato da
15/3/2009
Duane Hopkins
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Sunday is a multi-screen film installation where Hopkins has created a series of works that explore the grammatical possibilities of film beyond the formal constraints of narrative cinema. Like much of his cinema work, Sunday deals with the rural British youth and the relationship between identity, psychology and environment.
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in partnership with Third is
delighted to present Sunday, an exhibition by one of Britain's most
exciting emerging filmakers Duane Hopkins.
Sunday is a multi-screen film installation composed of a sequence of
film portraits of young people within a largely blank rural landscape.
Like much of Hopkins' cinema, Sunday deals with rural British youth and
the relationships between identity, psychology and environment.
The exhibition will feature five works using the different spaces of
BALTIC's Level 1, presenting scenes that work visually, sonically and
physically to create hallucinatory dreamlike atmospheres. Three boys are
presented as the protagonists in several filmic essays that are
documentary in subject and imagery, yet highly discursive in form and
structure. The impression formed is suggestive of a social-realist
fairytale - the subtle interaction of realist, surreal and romantic
tropes.
There Are No Lions in England is the largest of the five works and is
projected over a space totalling 8.5 metres wide. The image is composed
of three elements pieced together as a single 'film triptych' - creating
an image ratio that is both epic and intimate. The temporal
relationships between these elements are often staggered and
occasionally reversed, conjuring the notion of different parallel
universes. Whilst generating ambiences that are both ominous and
romantic, foreboding and yet nostalgic. The shifting interaction of the
three images, a device also employed in Cigarette at Night and Strange
Little Girl, work suggestively towards a complex meditation between a
personal inner reality and the external world. Character and
environment, time and place and the relationships between each are
highlighted.
Also presented are two works called Bridge and Lamp Post.
Alessandro Vincentelli, Acting Head of Programme at BALTIC adds: "With
his meticulously crafted installation for BALTIC, Hopkins has created an
experience that is entirely separate from the conventions of sitting in
a cinema. He generates a portrait of youth that has a matter of fact,
harsh reality to it and a psychological intensity that is unnerving. His
atmospheric films of young people are not narrative driven, but rather
build up in layers, creating an immersive experience that combines
close-up images and sound, against a background of an immutable bleakly
beautiful, rural landscape where time seems to extend forever. His use
of the full range of the spaces in the Level 1 gallery will make for an
all encompassing experience for the viewer.
Hopkins has created work with a really distinctive vision. It is
beautifully staged, ambitious work and generates a very different
portrait of rural England".
After collecting a number of awards for his graduation film, Hopkins
produced two further highly regarded short films; Field (2001) a dark,
unblinking tale of bored children living in an unwelcoming rural area
won the Golden Hugo Award at Chicago International Film Festival and
Best Film at Dresden Film Festival and Love Me Or Leave Me Alone (2003),
an honest examination of first love, collected Best Short Film at the
Edinburgh Film Festival and the European Film Awards. In 2008 he
released a strikingly formidable debut feature film Better Things that
received great critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival and
increased Hopkins' profile, with coverage in The Independent, The
Observer and The Guardian amongst others. Better Things went on to win
the FIPRESCI Critics Award at the Stockholm International Film Festival
2008 and is currently on general cinema release.
Hopkins lives and works in Gateshead Tyne and Wear and Oslo, Norway.
Sunday will also exhibit at FACT in Liverpool in 2009.
For further information please contact:
Ann Cooper, Media Officer T: 0191 440 4915 E: annc@balticmill.com
Nikki Johnson, Communications Assistant T: 0191 440 4912 E: nikkij@balticmill.com
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays South Shore Road - Gateshead
Open Daily 10.00-18.00 except Tuesdays 10.30-18.00