-
The Portuguese Conspiracy Screenings at MK Gallery
17th August
‘The Mesh and the Circle’, Francisco Queimadela & Mariana Caló
Documentary, Experimental, 2014, Portugal, Italy, 35’
Over the course of several months, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela collected visual testimonies of various labour and ludic activities and other daily practices rooted in empirical knowledge.
Establishing intuitive relations between concrete gestures and substances, sensorial experiences and analogical thinking, the authors have created a fragmentary film immersed on the idea of transformation of matter, generating a revolving movement that metamorphoses itself over time.
The Artificial Humors’, Gabriel Abrantes
Fiction, 2017, Portugal, 29’
The Artificial Humours, is a film about humor, anthropology and artificial intelligence. It focuses on how humor is central to human relationships across, used as a form of social control, and one of the most complex forms of communication. Blending a certain Hollywood aesthetic with documentary approaches, the film tells the story of an indigenous girl who falls in love with a robot that is a rising stand up comedian in Brazil.
‘Flores’, Jorge Jácome
Fiction, 2017, Portugal, 26’
In a natural crisis scenario, the entire population of Azores is forced to evict due to an uncontrolled plague of hydrangeas, a common flower in these islands.
Two young soldiers, bound to the beauty of the landscape, guide us to the stories of sadness of those forced to leave and the inherent desire to resist by inhabiting the islands. The filmic wandering becomes a nostalgic and political reflection on territorial belonging and identity, and the roles we assume in the places we came from.
Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance at MK Gallery
13 June to 22 September 2019
Showing works spanning her entire career since the 1960s, this will be the first major retrospective of Rego’s work in England for over 10 years. The exhibition includes previously unseen paintings and works on paper from the artist’s family and close friends, which reflect Rego’s perspective as a woman immersed in urgent social issues and current affairs.
About the season:
“The events programme for the exhibition has been deeply infused by Paula Rego’s independent spirit of defiance: Collaborative, diverse and explorative, the path trailed by the generation of artists present, has been opened up and enlightened by Paula Rego’s beacon of creative autonomy and freedom.
We feel the programme is therefore, as much an atmospheric companion for the retrospective, as it is a tribute to Paula Rego’s deep, and long lasting influence in cutting through the thick air of Portugal’s “dusty” legacy of political dictatorship at many levels. Then and now, Paula’s fearless art touches, enlightens and expands.”
Generously supported by Camões Institute.
Coming Next”‘