Press Release 12 | 07 | 24
DNA : AND
Malcolm Le Grice, Selected Works 1960-2024
20thSeptember to 19thOctober 2024
Malcolm Le Grice |Spectral 1, 2 & 3| Print on Aluminum | 240cm x 80cm per panel
The British Film Institute (BFI) describes Malcolm Le Grice (b.1940) as "probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema". Since the mid-1960s, a period in which he showed his first, groundbreaking short films at the London Arts Lab, an influential hub for the capital's counterculture, and founded the workshop at the London Filmmakers Co-operative, Le Grice has been exploring the intersection of art, science and technology.
His entire catalogue of 80-plus films is now held in the British Film Archive as well as being represented in the permanent collections of the Tate, the Archives of the American Academy, the Royal Belgian Archive, the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the Pompidou Museum in Paris and MoMA in Barcelona.
Born in Plymouth and a resident of Thurlestone between 1999 and 2022, Malcolm Le Grice returns to Devon this Autumn for a very special exhibition at the Velarde Gallery in Kingsbridge.DNA : AND — Malcolm Le Grice, Selected Works 1960-2024presents video installations, selected 2D work, including original and recently rediscovered early paintings and drawings, and limited edition prints from some of his most celebrated films.
Le Grice's work interrogates the complex relationships between the processes of filmmaking and the politics of perception. Exploding the structures of conventional, linear, narrative-driven cinema, his films set out to question what it is that happens when the spectator engages with something, or as he puts it "the moment of encounter".
His abiding interest in the mathematics of perspective, the contradictions of multi-viewpoint and the representation of time extend a thread through art history that links Cubism, Futurism and Serial Photography with the works of contemporary artists such as Martin Creed, Steve McQueen, Matthew Barney and Douglas Gordon.
The selection forDNA : ANDincludes works that reference Le Grice's restless, career-long innovation in image, colour and image transformation through direct control of the printing process. In his early films, the artist's hand is evident through his physical manipulation of 8mm and 16mm filmstock and, during live performances, multiple projectors and screens.
A colourist in the tradition of Matisse and the Post-impressionists, Le Grice is an artist who combines the sensibilities of theorist, philosopher, scientist and software engineer. Powerful expressions of sensuality, emotion and memory provide a striking counterpoint to the rational, structural nature of his work.
As one of the first members of the Computer Arts Society in the late-1960s, Le Grice taught himself to programme large mainframe computers, which led to him creating ‘Your Lips' (1970), the first British computer generated work of visually abstract cinema. His enquiries have continued through the realms of video, digital and computer art.
In the early 1980s, he wrote his own programmes on the first ATARI home computer with the complex aim of producing complete and unique video works that challenge sensory perception and cognitive processing through endless loops of images and sounds, logically arranged by shape, position, colour and speed. His ongoing Chronos Project, started in the late 1980s, seeks to understand how Random Access Memory (RAM) can simulate the way the human mind stores, links and transforms random memories through a flexible, inter-connected catalogue of footage.
The exhibition reveals links between Le Grice's frequently exhibited and often large scale works and finds echoes in previously unseen early drawings and very recent prints, which take up themes such as Faces, Bathers, Punks and Jazz. The performative, improvisational nature of jazz, which saw Le Grice play in bands as a young man, has been an enduring influence on his oeuvre.
The rediscovered drawings, drawn mostly from the 1960s, resist a simple thematic interpretation but seem to echo parallel interests in the science of DNA, which Le Grice spent much time studying as a student at The Slade, and has returned to in his late career. These abstract images are dominated by linear forms and networks that pre-empt the loop structures in his films, as well as the permutation in electronic and computer technology.
As part of a collaborative DACS grant to complete a comprehensive digital archive of all his paintings, drawings, prints, film, video and digital work, not to mention his prodigious body of critical and theoretical writing, Le Grice is currently collaborating with a research project at a Eurecom, a French graduate school and research centre in digital sciences, to develop a new DNA-based storage system. The work he is including in the Velarde exhibition offers some highly subjective ideas of what might emerge from such an evolutionary process.
Categorising or divining the meaning or intention of Malcolm Le Grice's work has never been easy due to the fact its impetus is derived from unconscious decisions emerging directly in the process of creation. Each work is an exploration without a known endpoint. It is art as material process.
The exhibition opens on 20 September and runs until 19 October. Private View Thursday 19th September, 6pm-8pm.
SeeDNA : AND — Malcolm Le Grice, Selected Works 1960-2024at Velarde,86 Fore St, Kingsbridge, Devon TQ7 1PP.
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Print Ready 300dpi images for press use:
MALCOLM LE GRICE Spectral 1, Spectral 2 & Spectral 3
Editors Notes
Velarde
Opened in July 2023, Velarde is a contemporary Fine Art and Craft gallery in the heart of Kingsbridge, South Devon. The building includes a 1,400 square foot exhibition space, a sculpture garden, and two boutique apartments.Velarde aims to bring the very best in British and International contemporary art to Devon, giving collectors the opportunity to connect with emerging new talent, as well as established artists and makers. With a focus on quality, diversity of practice and creative innovation, Velarde's year-round programme of exhibitions brings exceptional painting, sculpture, photography and contemporary craft to the heart of the Southwest.
For further information contact Velarde, 86 Fore Street, Kingsbridge, Devon, TQ7 1PP andgallery@velarde.co.ukwww.velarde.co.uk
For further press information, interviews or additional images contact Mercedes Smith at Fine Art Communications director@fineartcommunications.co.uk | Tel 07825 270235 | www.fineartcommunications.co.uk
