ICO / LUX Artists Cinema Commissions 2010

LUX and The Independent Cinema Office (ICO) are proud to announce a new series of artists' film commissions to be released in cinemas across the UK in Spring 2010. Produced on 35mm, the commissions will intervene in cinema programmes around the UK, inserted before the main feature, to consciously respond to the cinema context.

The eight international commissioned artists are Gerard Byrne, Keren Cytter, Aurélien Froment, Amar Kanwar, Deimantas Narkevicius, Rosalind Nashashibi, Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Sharmini and Akram Zaatari.

The Artists Cinema follows on from two previous LUX-ICO commissioning projects - A Movie (2005) produced with Spacex, Film London and South West Screen; and The Artists Cinema (2006) with Frieze Projects which commissioned and toured new films by Phil Collins, Mark Leckey, Manon De Boer, Yang Fudong, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Miguel Calderón, Imogen Stidworthy, Jimmy Robert, Bonnie Camplin, Daria Martin and Mika Taanila reaching audiences of over 100,000 people in cinemas across the UK.

Independent Cinema Office is the national organisation for the development and support of independent film exhibition throughout the UK.www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk

The Artists Cinema commissions are supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

Artists Biographies

Gerard Byrne
Gerard Byrne (b.1969) is a visual artist working with photographic, video, and film. His work has been shown at international biennials including the Sydney Biennale, Gwangju Biennale (2008), Lyon Biennale (2007), 3rd Tate Triennial (2006), and the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003) as well as in major museums in Europe and the US. Solo exhibitions of his work include the Lisson Gallery, London (2009, 2007), ICA Boston (2008), Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2008), Dusseldorf Kunstverein (2007), the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2007), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2003), the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2002). In 2007 he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. In 2006 he was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn award. Major works by him are included in the collections of Tate museum, London, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, MUDUM, Luxembourg, Museion, Bolzano, GAM, Torino, IMMA, Dublin, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Kunsthalle Bern Foundation, and the FRAC collections of Nord Pas-de-Calais and Pays de la Loire, amongst others. He is represented by the Lisson Gallery in London, Green on Red Gallery in Dublin, and Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm. He has been Professor of Time Based Media at the Royal Danish Academy for Fine Art since 2007.

Keren Cytter
Keren Cytter (b. 1977, Tel Aviv), lives and works in Berlin. She studied at Avni Institute for Art, Tel Aviv and De Ateliers, Amsterdam. After graduating, Cytter has made several works that have been shown internationally including "the Date Series" (2004; a series of short narratives written, filmed and produced in the period of one year), "The Victim" (2006), "Repulsion" ( 2005; after on Polanski's Repulsion), and "The Milk Man"(2003).
In addition to creating video installations for her shows, Cytter is also a critically acclaimed writer "Alexia" (2001) being her first published journal and her first novel "Yesterday's Sunset" (Shadurian, 2003). Her latest work includes "The Man who climbed the stairs of life and found out they were cinema seats", a stylistic approach to cataloguing her narrative films. In addition to novels and Journals, Cytter has published poems and written the libretto for the chamber opera "LE VOISIN" (by Thomas Myrmel).
Cytter's work has been shown in museums and galleries around Europe, such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Stedelijk Museum, (Amsterdam), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, (Vienna), Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Bergamo), Kunsthalle Zurich, and Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Elisabeth Kaufmann Gallery (Zürich). Cytter was also awarded the Baloise Art Prize at the "Art Statements" sector of Art 37 Basel. 2006.

Aurélien Froment
(b. 1976, Angers, France; lives in Dublin) His current practice involves the use and making of films, exhibitions and publications through a diverse array of collaborations with artists, institutions, friends and numerous image manipulators. The documentary approach plays a key role in his work, investigating the positions that inform our reception of the material he collects, such as narratives borrowed from cinema, architecture and the history of entertainment. Recent show of Aurélien Froment include The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers (Wattis Institute, San Francisco), For Immediate Release (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin), The Fourth Wall (Montehermoso, Vitoria), Froebel Suite (Gasworks, London), La légende vivante (Galerie Lucile Corty, Paris) and Théâtre de poche (Bonniers Konsthalle, Stockholm). Further information on Aurélien Froment’s work can be found atwww.motivegallery.nl.

Amar Kanwar
Born, Lives and works from New Delhi. Recent solo exhibitions have been at the Stediljk Museum, Amsterdam and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. He has participated in Documenta 11 and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany and is also the recipient of the 1st Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway and an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, USA. His films are also shown at film festivals and he has received several awards like the Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, the Golden Conch, Mumbai International Film Festival, Jury’s Award, Film South Asia, Nepal.

Rosalind Nashashibi
Born 1973, Croydon, lives and works in London. Studied at Glasgow School of Art, CalArts and Sheffield Hallam University. Recent solo exhibitions include ICA, Stuttgart Kunstlerhaus, Berkeley Art Museum, Chisenhale. She has been awarded the John Kobal New Work Award, Beck's Futures Art Prize and the A M Qattan Foundation Artist's Prize.

Deimantas Narkevicius
Deimantas Narkevicius was born in 1964 in Utena, Lithuania and lives and works in Vilnius. He graduated from the Art Academy in Vilnius as a sculptor and spent a year in London in 1992/93. On his return to Lithuania he was concerned with site-specific objects but a strong interest in narrative led him to record interviews and conversations with artists. This process evolved into an exploration of different narrative structures through film and video, the work for which Narkevicius is now best known.Narkevicius is one of the most consistent and widely recognised Lithuanian artists on the international art scene. He represented his country at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and exhibits at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 in ‘Utopia Station’ curated by Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Since 1992 he has exhibited extensively around the world in group shows at many significant contemporary art venues and events. He showed at Manifesta II in Luxemburg in 1998 and has exhibited in London, Paris, Brussels, Vilnius, Manchester, Dublin, Vienna, Brussels, Helsinki, Stockholm, Zurich, Rotterdam, Melbourne and many other cities. Solo shows include ‘Either true or fictitious’, at FRAC Pays de la Loire in France in 2003 and ‘Deimantas Narkevicius Project’ at the Munchner Kunstverein, Munich in 2002.

Catherine Sullivan with Farhad Sharmini
Catherine Sullivan's works engage a variety of media - theater, film, video, photography, writing and sculpture. She has produced several performances and theater works wherein the performers are often coping with written texts, stylistic economies, reenactments of historic performances, gestural and choreographic regimes, and conceptual orthodoxies. The works address a broad spectrum of historical reference and often involve multiple collaborators such as composer Sean Griffin. Her work is often staged and shot on sets for unrelated productions and in settings that project social function beyond the mise en scène Sullivan builds within them. What hopefully emerges from the numerous layers of collaboration and reference is an anxious and unresolved political and social sensibility. Work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at a wide variety of venues such as the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Opéra de Lyon, Lyon; and Volksbühne, Berlin.

Farhad Sharmini
Farhad Sharmini has presented his work at venues in Los Angeles, and Berlin, Vienna and Athens, among other locales. Deriving in large part from sources in literature and film, this work, mostly sculpture and site-based pieces, combines narrative and theatrical elements with formal structuring. Sharmini was born in Tehran; he lives and works in Los Angeles.

Akram Zaatari
Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 1966) is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. Zaatari’s work explores issues pertinent to postwar Lebanon, mainly the logic of religious and national resistance, and the production and circulation of images in the context of geographically divided Middle East. Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), Zaatari has focused on collecting, studying, and archiving the photographic history of the Middle East notably studying the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (1928-), as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.