Gillian Wearing: ‘A Room With Your Views’
Turner Prize-winning British artist Gillian Wearing will present the world premiere of Your Views - one of the largest collaborative film projects ever to be produced - at HOUSE, Brighton’s festival of visual art, and Brighton Festival 2016 – the largest and most established multi-arts festival in England which this year marks its 50th anniversary.
‘A Room With Your Views’, by Gillian Wearing, will be a video installation and exhibition premiering ‘Your Views’, which takes place in Brighton University Galleries and is the artist’s first solo exhibition on the South Coast of England.
Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival, with HOUSE, for Brighton Festival’s 50th anniversary year, the project invites anyone to film a short clip of either their curtains or blinds opening to reveal a view from their window. Like the curtains going up at the beginning of a stage play, each view is a pictorial unveiling of a landscape, cityscape or even a brick wall.
The film asks for contributions to be uploaded to www.yourviews.org. It is hoped that Brighton & Hove residents will feel compelled to send their own films to the project as well as participants from far further afield.
Gillian Wearing, OBE, commented, “It feels personal in the way that each person has approached the instructions to the film and universal as it unites the world in the harmonious gesture of opening the curtains, blinds or shutters to give us a glimpse of their views. I am delighted by this opportunity to present ‘A Room With Your Views’ to the HOUSE and Brighton Festival audience and hopefully the work will include some local participant’s films too.”
Andrew Comben, CEO, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival, said, “We are delighted to have co-commissioned Gillian Wearing for Brighton Festival 2016. In this – our 50th year – we particularly wanted to reflect on the nature of ‘home’ and ‘place’ and this project does just that, providing an insight into people’s views from their windows throughout the world. I can’t wait to see the project develop and hope that the whole community will get involved by sending in their own films”.
Judy Stevens, HOUSE Director, said, “We are pleased to be working with Gillian Wearing and with Brighton Festival, to produce a new piece of work for HOUSE 2016 and excited that A Room With Your Views will form the centre piece of this year’s HOUSE festival. As such the work acts as inspiration and catalyst for a series of further commissions and community projects from an impressive range of young, mid-career and marginalized artists.”