PayneShurvell/16 Hewett Street/London/EC2A 3NN/Telephone: www.payneshurvell.com
PayneShurvell is to showing Wrik Mead’s ‘1975’, an hour-long animation depicting one year of the artist’s fractured life along with a series of original works on paper. Draw the Line is curated by Mark Waugh.
‘1975’ is based on a collection of hand-drawn animated sequences that contain figures performing simple acts and gestures. These sequences are set against a chalkboard backdrop, a familiar signifier for learning and discovery for a young boy of 13. The focus in this work turns to the artist himself and is built on personal memory and introspection. The intimate and slow process of animation, bringing drawings to life, is ideal for this self-reflection. Each animated sequence contains characters playing out key moments during this year. These quasi narratives are loose interpretations of actual events allowing viewers to attach their own meaning and interpretation. Each animated character is drawn with a white outline to mimic chalk, referencing the earliest form of animation, more specifically, James Stuart Blackton’s chalk-board animation Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Created during animation’s infancy at the turn of the last century, it now appears innocent, awkward, full of errors, yet it is still captivating.
Wrik Mead, ‘Canada’s prolific poet-priest of pervert pixilation” has accumulated a unique body of more than twenty animated miniature narratives: queer fantasies, parables, dreams, and documentaries that returns time and time again to themes of identity, longing, ritual and transformation. Mead is an award-winning filmmaker known for many years on the European and North American film festival circuit. Draw the Line will be Mead’s first solo show in the UK. He is represented in Canada by CFMDC and in Paris by Light Cone.
During the Frieze art fair in October we will be hosting a one-off night of Wrik Mead’s film, accompanied by a live newly composed soundtrack – details to be announced.
