Artists’ Film Screenings: The 2018 Shortlist

Artists’ Film Screenings: The 2018 Shortlist

The growing demand for video content has created a shift in modes of creative production, offering artists a wider platform for expression. The ever-evolving genre of Artists’ Film is highlighted in the 2018 edition of the Aesthetica Art Prize exhibition at York Art Gallery, which calls into question new modes of communication, over-consumption and media disconnection.

Alongside a full display of both longlisted and shortlisted works at York Art Gallery, an immersive and all-encompassing showcase of Artists’ Films is held within 1331’s independent cinema. Innovative and thought-provoking, the pieces offer new perspectives on the contemporary landscape, drawing upon social and political structures to question the value that we place on the world around us. The screenings are designed to give Artists’ Film a platform that extends beyond the gallery walls, and the first strand to be shown on the big screen, Future Now: The 2018 Shortlist, investigates ideas of identity through work by three shortlisted moving-image makers.

Films include Kenji Ouellet’s I Am One, which investigates ideas of individuality in the ever-growing urban landscape by pairing images of the metropolis with a collection of quotes from celebrities and anonymous figures. Further exploring ideas of disconnection, Lost in Translation, a film by this year’s Emerging Prize winner, Electra Lyhne-Gold, questions the wider impact of advertising, providing reimagined narratives collaged together from mainstream media. Lastly, Noemi Varga’s The Happiest Barrack considers familial histories. The experimental documentary – which won Best in Category at the 2017 Aesthetica Short Film Festival – is chronicle of Varga’s grandmother’s life in Communist Hungary, serving as a memento of times past and present.

See the films at 1331, York on 27 June, 19:00-20:00. Free entry. Find out more here.

Credits:
1. Noemi Varga, The Happiest Barrack, 2017.
2. Electra Lyhne-Gold, Lost in Translation, 2017.
3. Kenji Ouellet,  I Am One, 2016.