KW Institute for Contemporary Art is delighted to announce the ‘KW Production Series’, a new commissioning project dedicated to artists’ moving image. In collaboration with the Julia Stoschek Collection and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland, KW will concentrate on two new productions per year. Artists Jamie Crewe and Beatrice Gibson will inaugurate this series. The project takes inspiration from KW’s founding principles, as a place of production and thinking, as well as a space for critical exchange and collaboration. Using the institution’s historic identity as a way to imagine ambitious new art works, this series is not simply a commission but a desire to enter into a conversation that will provide a robust framework to push artists and the institution to produce works of quality and excellence for its public.
This series seeks to identify and serve artists who are at a pivotal moment in their work and career—those who will benefit not only from the financial support and institutional visibility this opportunity presents, but also those who will be able to use the KW Production Series to significantly and permanently transform the depth and rigor of their artistic practice.
‘KW Production Series’ is produced by Mason Leaver-Yap, KW’s Associate Curator.
About the artists and projects
Jamie Crewe’s new work comprises two parallel videos that use allegory and animation to think about “progress,” exploring the evolution of mythic narratives, interpersonal change, and collective political time. With references to both the ancient Greek legend of Eurydice and Agostino Agazzari’s 15th century opera Eumelio, Crewe’s moving image production will be made daily over the course of the coming year, and will be interrupted by footage of friends’ reflections, conversations, and commentary.
Jamie Crewe is an artist, a singer, and a beautiful bronze figure with a polished cocotte’s head. Born in Manchester (GB) and based in Glasgow (GB), they completed their BA in Contemporary Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University and their Master of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Female Executioner, Gasworks, London, 2017; and But what was most awful was a girl who was singing, Transmission, Glasgow, 2016. Their performance Potash Lesson, was presented at Tramway, Glasgow; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Gasworks, London, and Catalyst Arts, Belfast (IE).
Exploring ideas around gender, poetry, and disobedience, Beatrice Gibson’s new film is a collaboration with two of US-America’s most significant living poets—CA Conrad and Eileen Myles—and draws inspiration from the work of a third – the US-American novelist Gertrude Stein and her unrealized script Film: Deux Soeurs qui sont pas Soeurs (1929). Exploring poetry as a means to reckon with the present, Gibson uses Stein’s script as a talismanic guide through a contemporary moment of social and political unrest.
Beatrice Gibson lives and works in London. Gibson has twice won the Rotterdam International Film Festival Tiger Award for Short Film. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the 2013–15 Max Mara Art Prize for Women, and in 2015 won the 17th Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel, Basel (CH). Recent solo exhibitions include MUDAM – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, 2016; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (AT), 2016; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (GB), 2015. Gibson’s films have been screened nationally and internationally, and venues include the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Experimenta, London, Wavelengths, Toronto, Projections, The New York, Light Industry, Anthology Film Archives, and LA Film Forum.
‘KW Production Series’ is made possible with generous support by the Julia Stoschek Collection and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
