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Nathaniel Mellors, Ourhouse, Ep.-1: Time, 2016, (still),
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Mel Brimfield, The Semiotics of the Kitchen, 2011, Pavel Buchler, Waiting to Happen, 2016 and Clowns, Acrobats and Other, 1986
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Mladen Stilinović, Dictionary – Pain, 2011 and Artist at Work, 1978
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Sally O'Reilly, The Harris Garulatrix, 2016
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Common Culture, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On (Dave), 2016
Exhibition
Nothing Happens, Twice
6 Feb 2016 – 4 Jun 2016
Event times
Mon: 11am-5pm, Tues - Sat: 10am-5pm
Cost of entry
FREE
Address
- Market Square, Preston, PR1 2PP
- Preston
- PR1 2PP
- United Kingdom
Samuel Beckett /John Bock /Mel Brimfield /Broomberg & Chanarin /Pavel Buchler /Common Culture (Ian Brown, David Campbell & Mark Durden) /Steph Fletcher /Pat Flynn /Willum Geerts /Hilde Krohn Huse /Nathaniel Mellors /Sally O’Reilly /Hardeep Pandhal /Pierrick Sorin /Mladen Stilinovic /Bedwyr Williams
About
Nothing Happens, Twice uses the theatre of the absurd as its starting point, exploring notions of repetition, farce and tragicomedy. It includes a major new film commission by Doncaster-born, international artist Nathaniel Mellors, with whom the museum won the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award in 2014.
The exhibition includes four other new commissions by Pavel Buchler, Common Culture, Hardeep Pandhal and Sally O’Reilly, as well as film, sculpture and painting by 11 other leading contemporary artists. The exhibition title is taken from academic Vivien Mercier’s description of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, as ‘a play in which nothing happens, twice’.
Beckett, as with many of the artists in this exhibition, deconstructs notions of time, using it as a malleable medium to orchestrate absurdist scenarios. The works highlight the absurdity of the human condition in our relationship to each other, the natural world and the metaphysical, confronting us with situations that might, in some ways, be analogous to our own.
Nathaniel Mellors new film commission, Ourhouse, Ep.-1: Time, has enabled him to create his most ambitious work to date. This absurdist drama, which is shot in various locations around Preston features an eccentric family who inhabit Preston’s iconic, brutalist bus station. It has a TARDIS-like interior, subjecting them to a series of fantastical events while finding themselves inundated by Neanderthals. The main character Charles 'Daddy' Maddox-Wilson played by Richard Bremmer, has invented a revolutionary new theory of time - but the family's subsequent attempts at time-travel see them duped, cannibalised and trapped inside a permanent present.
Nothing Happens, Twice is part of Dance First, Think Later, a 15 month contemporary art programme exploring notions of performativity and the human condition; tragicomedy and absurdity curated by Clarissa Corfe.
Nathaniel Mellors new film commission Ourhouse, Ep.-1: Time is presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 2015, through the Annual Award funded by the Sfumato Foundation with the support of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Mondriaan Foundation and Arts Council England. Commissioned by the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston. Produced by NOMAD and Nathaniel Mellors.
