New Art Projects is delighted to present a solo show by artist, painter, performer turned film-maker and musician Anna Thew.
Anna made her first film in 1980, at that time British experimental cinema was dominated by the Structuralist Materialist school, which questioned the specificity of the medium and above all its materiality. However, in her works Thew both questioned and expanded this position and gained a reputation for film and performance works emotive content. Creating beautiful images beautifully edited and ‘cut up’ alongside spoken word soundtracks, Thew creates sometimes biographical and often poetic works that cover multiple screens and use assemblage to push the limits of what is possible where art, music and poetry collide. Examples of her unique combination of references leading to what she describes as ‘optical counterpoint’ come to light in works such as Hilda Was a Goodlooker (1986), Eros Erosion (1990), her seminal film in response to the HIV epidemic Cling Film (1993) and more recently Stolen Time – The Revenge of the Lost Negatives (2016)
Anna Thew has always made drawings and music as well as performed in her work and alongside her practice as a film maker. This new exhibition seeks to grasp at the complex strands of her work and to bring together historic and recent works on paper and on film in a show made up of works never shown, and clips and reels never screened. The show will culminate in a new work including multi-screen projection at the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
PV: Thursday, 30 October – 6-9pm
Open 31st October – 20th December
→ Press Release
→ Monitor: Stills/Synopses
→ Main screen: Stills/Synopses
Installation view:
Notes for editors:
Anna Thew studied languages at Manchester University and Painting at Chelsea School of Art. Her first encounter with the ‘American Collection’ and the underground films of Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken, Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Chick Strand, Bruce Baillie, Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneeman, Joseph Cornell, Ron Rice, Jack Smith and the British and French avant-garde, was through her relationship with Anne Rees-Mogg at Chelsea College of Art.
Her fascination with the avant-garde continued at the weekly London Film-makers’ Co-operative Cinema screenings and by couriering packages of American Underground Film to Genova, Venice, Bologna and Rome before making her own 16mm and Super 8 films coinciding with her ongoing work as distribution organiser in the “Archive” at the London Film-makers’ Co-operative.
She has collaborated and worked alongside Roberta Graham, Steve Farrer, Nicky Hamlyn, Jo Comino, George Saxon Derek Jarman, Franko B, Jo Comino, Dominic Johnson and musicians Hermine, Identical, Cyclobe: Steve Thrower, Gavin Mitchell, Orlando Harrison and countless film-makers, musicians and performers. Thew initiated the Filmmakers Co-op Preview Shows and encouraged film-makers active promotion of living experimental and underground film, including multi-screen, installation, Super 8 and film performance art, forging lasting links with film-makers in Italy, France, Germany and the US.
Her works are distributed by the British Film Institute and Lux, London; Light Cone, Paris, and Edition Manfred Salzgeber in Berlin. In the nineties she co-founded FLUX developing a recognition of avant-garde and underground film culture in art schools, through her seminar screenings of experimental film (celluloid and latterly DVD) at Goldsmiths, Chelsea and Central Saint Martins, UAL entitled “To Free The Cinema”.