INTERIOR DOMESTIC
Early Works (1979-88) by Ian Bourn
08.02.14 - 02.03.14
Preview: Friday 07.02.14 6-9pm
Gallery open: Saturday - Sunday 1-6pm or by appointment

Interior Domestic: Evening Presentation & Artist’s Talk
Sunday 23rd February at 7pm

After introducing the four pieces featured in the show, Ian Bourn will give a short talk about the work and his art in general and invite questions from the audience.

Space is limited so RSVP is essential: info@fiveyears.org.uk

Interior Domestic is a gallery presentation of four early moving image works by Ian Bourn all ‘conceived’ during the years 1979 to 1983 and three of which have rarely been screened since the eighties.
New digitally re-mastered versions of B.29 (1979), Making Yourself At Home (1981) and What Is He Doing Now? (1983-88), together with The End Of The World (1982) will make up a programme of work that not only provides a fascinating insight into the formative years of Bourn’s development as an artist but also offers a vision of Britain seen from the margins and set to the ‘mood-music’ of the early Thatcher era.

“Ian Bourn has been making videos since the late 70s, at a time when most video artists were experimenting with black and white low-band U-matic, and relatively few homes had video recorders.
However it was the medium’s means of playback - on domestic-TV-like monitors - which attracted Bourn, who saw the potential for using the familiarity of television’s modes of address to develop his own highly personal and idiosyncratic style….”
“Bourn has described his single-screen video work as ‘a kind of portraiture that examines role-play and the viewer’s relationship with people portrayed on film.’ As well as being a consummate writer, Bourn is also an actor, often appearing in his own and other’s work. The blurring of fiction and autobiography is what gives the work its edge.”
from The Lost High Road by Felicity Sparrow, web essay (http://luxonline.org.uk/artists/ian_bourn/essay(1).html)

Acknowledged as one of the pioneers of early British video art, since the late seventies Ian Bourn has been producing highly original and distinctive experimental works, which have been shown in major international film/video festivals, art shows and on TV. These range from the stark direct-to-camera monologues of Lenny’s Documentary (1978) and Monolog (1999) to Black White & Green (2003), a meditation on the traditional London cuisine of ‘pie and mash’ commissioned for Channel 4TV’s Animate Series.

In 1985 Bourn founded the HOUSEWATCH artists collective, creating numerous film/video installation events shown in Britain and Japan between 1985 and 1997.
HOUSEWATCH designed works for architecture and urban environments, from the purpose-built Japanese teahouse of Paperhouse (1992) to Imaginary Opera (1994), which used the exterior of London’s Royal Festival Hall, forty film projectors and a live orchestra.
His collaborative installations include Revolver, with artist Tony Sinden for Canary Wharf London in 1997 and The Kiss in 1999 with filmmaker John Smith shown in Tokyo, Turin and London.

More recently Bourn has been developing Peninsula; a series of video and mixed media installation works which began with Skirting (2011), originally for ‘Archipelago’ at Café Gallery Projects in London and with further versions devised for Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, Scotland (2012) and for two shows in Germany as part of ‘On Dilettantism’ at ACC Weimar and HALLE14 Leipzig (2012). To The Lighthouse (2013) is the latest incarnation of the project shown in London and in Scarborough last year.