The Model is delighted to present a solo show with UK artist and filmmaker Phil Collins.
Collins’ films, photographs, installations, and live events are based on close engagement with people and communities. Over the years the artist has collaborated with disco-dancing Palestinians, young people from Baghdad, Turkish and British reality TV participants, and teachers of Marxism-Leninism in the former DDR, amongst many others. Collins’ work often touches upon the construction of identity, particularly in relation to the video camera and other popular recording media. Reflecting his own experiences growing up in northern England in the 1970s and 1980s, his works use music, television and pop culture to explore social situations and transcend definitions of language, social status and locality.
For his exhibition at The Model Collins presents three installations that have never been previously shown in Ireland.
In order to create free fotolab, 2009, Collins invited inhabitants of various European cities (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom; Belgrade, Serbia; and Eindhoven, the Netherlands, amongst others) to submit undeveloped rolls of 35mm film. He processed and printed films free of charge, and in return the amateur photographers relinquished the rights to their images. A slide carousel, which projects the selected images, presents juxtapositions that are by turns coherent and surprising. For some viewers, the 35mm film and slide projector—now obsolete—may evoke childhood memories; the images themselves are poignant reminders of the experiences and visual cues that are shared by people around the world.
dunia tak akan mendengar, 2007, is the final part of the world won’t listen trilogy (2004-07) that saw Collins collaborate with fans of The Smiths across three continents to create a karaoke video version of the 1987 eponymous compilation album. The artist initially re-recorded the entire album, song by song, with musicians in Bogotá (Colombia) and created a karaoke machine that was toured to subsequent far-flung locations, including Istanbul (Turkey), Jakarta and Bandung in Indonesia, where this particular installment was filmed. Resulting in a series of tender and emotional portraits, the work is a study on the mediation and transformative power of popular music across cultures, languages and geographies. Similarly the meaning of style, 2011,a short 16 mm film transferred to video, was produced with a group of young anti-fascist skinheads in Penang in Malaysia. Here Collins looks at the local adoption of skinhead subculture, originally a black and white working class movement, in the form of a cinematic reverie set to an original soundtrack by Welsh musician Gruff Rhys and North Wales surf band Y Niwl. Incorporating a rich collage of symbols and architecture from East and West, the film provides a delicate frame for reflection on the relationship between British colonial history, complex racial politics, and contemporary cultural styles in this region of the world.
On the occasion of, and as a complement to this exhibition, Phil Collins and Siniša Mitrović (Shady Lane Productions), have put together a special screening programme which includes additional works by Collins and by other artists and film-makers, such as Anri Sala, Susanne Sachsse and Charles Atlas, as well as a series of features from German Democratic Republic, Taiwan, United States, and the UK.