The British Film Institute (BFI) describes Malcolm Le Grice (b.1940) as “probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema".
Born in Plymouth and a resident of Thurlestone between 1999 and 2022, Malcolm Le Grice returns to Devon this Autumn for a very special exhibition at Velarde. DNA : AND — Malcolm Le Grice, Selected Works 1960 - 2024 presents video installations, selected 2D work, including original and recently rediscovered early paintings and drawings, and limited edition prints from some of his most celebrated films.
Le Grice’s work interrogates the complex relationships between the processes of filmmaking and the politics of perception. Exploding the structures of conventional, linear, narrative-driven cinema, his films set out to question what it is that happens when the spectator engages with something, or as he puts it “the moment of encounter”.
The selection for DNA : AND includes works that reference Le Grice’s restless, career-long innovation in image, colour and image transformation through direct control of the printing process. In his early films, the artist’s hand is evident through his physical manipulation of 8mm and 16mm filmstock and, during live performances, multiple projectors and screens.
The exhibition reveals links between Le Grice’s frequently exhibited and often large scale works and finds echoes in previously unseen early drawings and very recent prints, which take up themes such as Faces, Bathers, Punks and Jazz. The performative, improvisational nature of jazz, which saw Le Grice play in bands as a young man, has been an enduring influence on his oeuvre.
The rediscovered drawings, drawn mostly from the 1960s, resist a simple thematic interpretation but seem to echo parallel interests in the science of DNA, which Le Grice spent much time studying as a student at The Slade, and has returned to in his late career. These abstract images are dominated by linear forms and networks that preempt the loop structures in his films, as well as the permutation in electronic and computer technology.
Categorising or divining the meaning or intention of Malcolm Le Grice’s work has never been easy due to the fact its impetus is derived from unconscious decisions emerging directly in the process of creation. Each work is an exploration without a known endpoint. It is art as material process.
Supported by:
BFI, Curtin University, DACS, Eurecom, The Film-Makers’ Coop, Lightcone, LUX
