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BBC Four Goes Abstract

8 August 2014

Channel Idents

BBC Four celebrates the extraordinary innovation of abstract art in When Art Broke Free, a season of programmes exploring one of art's most groundbreaking forms. To celebrate the season, four of Britain's most exciting artists who work with the moving image were asked to produce their very own channel idents, each inspired by the spirit of abstraction.

The works, by the 2013 Turner Prize winning artist, Laure Prouvost, acclaimed artists John Smith, Sebastian Buerkner and this year’s Turner Prize nominee James Richards, are presented here alongside words by the artists on what abstract art means to them.

The idents were commissioned by BBC Four with LUX, an international arts agency.

Still from Sebastian Buerkner's ident

Abstraction

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Laure Prouvost

BBC Four channel ident by Laure Prouvost

Specially created for BBC Four Goes Abstract

What inspired you to create this ident?

The magic of images within the frame of the tv screen, tricks coming with the appearance of a moving image, images triggering a trompe-l'oeil of emotions, digging deeper images.

What does abstract art mean to you?

Something that takes you out of your conscience, going somewhere less articulated. The feeling of a colour, of texture, carefully edited, cut. What you might see when you close your eyes.

About the artist

Laure Prouvost (born 1978, Lille, lives and works in London) constructs invented story-lines which explore the slippages between fiction and reality, engaging provocatively with the connections between language, image, and perception.

Her work, which straddles forms of video, installation and performance, has been exhibited extensively across the UK and internationally.

In 2013 she was the winner of the Turner Prize, nominated for the exhibition Farfromwords, Whitechapel Gallery, London, which toured to Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (both 2013) and her film installation Wantee, as part of Schwitter's in Britain, Tate Britain, London (2013).

In 2014 she had her first US solo exhibition at the New Museum, New York, in addition to solo exhibitions at Morra Greco Foundation, Naples, Extra City Kunsthall, Antwerp and Danspace, New York.

Upcoming solo exhibitions of her work include the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin and Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City.

This year, she will participate in the The Great Acceleration, Taipei Biennial, Taipei, Taiwan; Portraits d’Intérieurs, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; More Real Than Reality Itself, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Houston, Texas and Mirror City, Hayward Gallery, London.

Recent exhibitions include:

  • The Meeting, MOT International, Brussels (2014)
  • Meanwhile...Suddenly...and Then, Lyon Biennial, Lyon, FR (2013)
  • The Assistants curated by Fionn Mead, David Kordansky Gallery, L.A. (2013)
  • The Wanderer, Gallery TPW, Toronto, CA (2013)
  • Uber den Dilettantismus, Halle 14, Leipzig (2012)
  • Reflexion und Einfühlung, KAI 10 Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf (2012)
  • Soundworks, ICA, London (2012)
  • Time Again, Sculpture Center, New York (2011)
  • Flacas Portikus, Frankfurt (2011)
  • All These Things Think Link, Flat Time House, London (2010)
  • Tate Lightbox, Tate Britain, London (2010).

She has screened work in film festivals internationally and won the Principal Prize at both the 56th and 57th Oberhausen Film Festivals.

Laure Prouvost

Sebastian Buerkner

BBC Four channel ident by Sebastian Buerkner

Specially created for BBC Four Goes Abstract

What inspired you to create this ident?

It was a curiosity into the emotive potential of visual disintegration and playing with perception thresholds.

What does Abstraction mean to you?

Abstraction is an inseparable part of my cognitive reality of this world and this life I've got.

About the artist

Sebastian Buerkner (born in Berlin, Germany) lives and works in London. He completed an MA at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2002 and was awarded their Fellowship Residency 2003. Since 2004 his art practice has concentrated exclusively on animation.

Recent solo shows include:

  • Kunsthaus im KunstkulturQuartier Nuremberg, Germany
  • Tramway, Glasgow
  • Sketch, London
  • The Showroom Gallery, London
  • Whitechapel Project Space, London
  • LUX at Lounge Gallery, London
  • Art on the Underground, Screen at Canary Wharf, London.

He has also participated in group shows and screenings at:

  • Tate Britain, London
  • Tate Modern, London
  • Tate Liverpool
  • Site Gallery, Sheffield
  • Barbican Gallery, London
  • Whitechapel Gallery, London
  • Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

His film Purple Grey (2006) was broadcast as part of AnimateTV on Channel 4.

This year he won the Tiger Award for his latest film The Chimera of M., at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Sebastian Buerkner

James Richards

BBC Four channel ident by James Richards

Specially created for BBC Four Goes Abstract

What inspired you to create this ident?

I wanted to take make something nostalgic and grainy and something where filmic images of sky and birds start to run and blur into something more painterly and abstract.

What does Abstraction mean to you?

Abstraction is a process for me - of transformation and refraction.

About the artist

James Richards (born 1983, UK) is an artist living and working in london.

Recent solo exhibitions include:

  • Rodeo, Istanbul, Turkey (2013)
  • Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan (2012)
  • Not Blacking Out, Just Turning The Lights Off, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2011)
  • Art Now: Clunie Reid and James Richards, Tate Britain (2010).

Recent group exhibitions include:

  • The Encyclopaedic Palace, 55th International Art Exhibition, Venice (2013)

  • Otherwise Unexplained Fires, Malmo Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden (2013)
  • Frozen Lakes, Artist Space, New York, USA (2013)
  • Speculations On Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel (2013)

Richards was the recipient of the 2012 Jarman award for film and video, the 2013 DAAD scholarship and the 2014/15 Ars Viva prize for visual arts.

He is shortlisted for the 1014 Turner Prize.

James Richards

John Smith

BBC Four channel ident by John Smith

Specially created for BBC Four Goes Abstract

What inspired you to create this ident?

My work is usually self-initiated and not made to any kind of brief, so I find it a welcome novelty when I am asked to produce work for a particular purpose. I often have to sit and think for ages before coming up with ideas, but this one emerged almost immediately and seemed to come together almost by itself.

I like subverting accepted conventions, so I knew from the start that I wanted to work with the familiar quartered BBC FOUR ident and deconstruct its elements. A lot of my work involves verbal and visual punning (going back as far as Associations from 1975 and Gargantuan, made for BBC Two's The Late Show in 1992).

So the idea of using images of two bees and the sea came very naturally. And in relation to the abstraction theme, it seemed obvious that the images could be abstracted by simply zooming in on them until their origins became unrecognisable and they appeared as abstract shapes and colours.

What does Abstraction mean to you?

Abstraction of both images and sounds features strongly in a lot of my film works, as I like the mystery that this creates. I often frame representational images in extreme close-up, so that it is not at first clear to the viewer what s/he is looking at, only revealing wider shots that show the full scene later - see Dad's Stick from 2012.

I similarly explore the properties of natural sounds and combine them in collages that stress their abstract, sometimes musical qualities. I enjoy exploiting these ambiguities of cinematic material, creating a kind of audio-visual guessing game that encourages viewers to ask themselves questions about what they are looking at, actively engaging with the film rather than just passively consuming it.

About the artist

John Smith (born Walthamstow, East London, 1952) is a visual artist who works mainly with film, video and installation.

Known for its formal ingenuity, anarchic wit and oblique storytelling, his work has been widely shown internationally in cinemas, galleries and on television for over 30 years.

Smith's films playfully explore the relationship between sound (the spoken word in particular) and image, often using documentary records of everyday life as their source material.

With a strong interest in ambiguity and the ways in which context can determine the reading of information, he has made many works where meaning is subverted by editing and framing strategies or the addition of a voice-over.

His films and videos are wilfully hybrid in nature, frequently combining elements of doc-umentary and fiction, abstraction and representation, seriousness and humour.

In combination with its formal concerns, Smith’s work is largely inspired by personal experience and frequently incorporates autobiographical elements. A strong sense of place pervades most of his films, many of which are set in his native east London.

Smith's recent solo exhibitions include:

  • Figge von Rosen Gallery, Cologne (2013)
  • Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2013)
  • Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2012)
  • Turner Contemporary, Margate (2012)
  • Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen (2012)
  • Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden (2011)
  • PEER Gallery, London (2011)

Recent group shows include:

  • Invocable Reality, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2014)
  • Constellations, Tate Liverpool (2013-14)
  • Image Counter Image, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012)
  • Has The Film Already Started?, Tate Britain (2011-12)
  • Berlin Biennial (2010)
  • The Talent Show, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and MoMA PS1, New York (2010).

Smith's films have been profiled through retrospec-tives at film festivals in Oberhausen, Tampere, St. Petersburg, La Rochelle, Mexico City, Uppsala, Cork, Regensburg, Karlstad, Winterthur, Bristol and Glasgow.

John Smith's work has been awarded major prizes at many international film festivals. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists and in 2013 he was the winner of Film London's Jarman Award.

His work is included in numerous collections including Arts Council, England and Tate Gallery. He is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and his films and videos are distributed by LUX, London and Video Data Bank, Chicago.

He lives and works in London.

John Smith

Dad's Stick, 2012

Dad's Stick, 2012

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