Image courtesy: the artist, FVU - Film and Video Umbrella, London and Kate MacGarry Gallery, London
"Travellers are strange beings to go to great distances, and at great expense, to see new things, without having taken the trouble to look at their feet or over their heads, where as many extraordinary and unknown things are passing as they can possibly desire to know." (Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden (Voyage autour de mon jardin), 1845).
Solo Exhibition "Fable"
On his camera voyages in "Slow Action" and "Things", Ben Rivers not only explores interlocking living environments but also always the act of filmmaking itself. He offers imaginary images containing the spirit of discovery, experimentation and research, the substance of which the viewer can take as the truth or not. His interest in fantastic literature, science fiction and travel reports that had their start in the late 18th century is reflected in the filmic interleaving of real and fictional spaces of perception.
Film "Things"
Ben Rivers' recent 16mm -Film "Things" (2014) is a 20-minute long travelogue in four chapters in which the British artist and filmmaker leads himself and the viewer through a tour of the four seasons without ever once having set foot across his doorstep. While Rivers undertook expeditions to far-removed or remote places of our civilisation in his earlier films, he now focuses his camera on unexplored things inside his own four walls. He sets off on a year-long journey through his own domestic surroundings that at the same time is also trip into his own imagination and collective memory.
Opening Hours
Thursday - Friday 14:00 - 18:00, Saturday and Sunday 13:00 - 17:00
Artist talk with Ben Rivers (engl.): Saturday, 6 September 2014, 16:00
Free entry, Events: 2,50 Euro