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theEYE: Lisa Milroy
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theEYE: Lisa Milroy

[ 26:15 ]
Lisa Milroy’s paintings are pleasurable and provocative, clear but complex, immediate and yet richly subtle. In 2001 many of her major works were brought together for an important exhibition at Tate Liverpool; this film, the first about her work, was made alongside that show. Her earliest works are depictions of everyday objects: shoes in serried ranks, collections of lightbulbs and household hardware. Later canvases explore the process of depicting images of people, blank facades of buildings, clichés of photographic landscapes. More recent work is looser and less apparently realist. Speaking about the development of her art from the early 1980s onwards, Lisa Milroy discusses how she uses the sensual and descriptive power of paint to express her unique ways of looking at the world. She reflects on the changes in her work; on the impact of Japan and its culture; on photography and time; and on the craft and process of painting.
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33:17
theEYE: Malcolm Morley
Malcolm Morley is one of the most significant and influential painters working today. Born in England but active in the United States since the late 1950s, Morley has developed an intensely individual vision embracing, but never determined by, autobiography, politics, psychoanalysis, myth, the visual culture of his time and the limitless potential of paint. Filmed as Morley works in his distinctive manner on a spectacular new canvas, this documentary features the artist's provocative reflections on his life, painting technique, influences and concerns. It also illustrates a wide range of his paintings from the earliest abstract works, through the painstakingly precise depictions of reproductions (on postcards, from travel brochures) of ships, contemporary scenes and Old Masters, to the catastrophe pictures of the 1970s. Paintings engaging with ancient cultures followed, and then works based on the cardboard cut-out aeroplane and boat kits which Morley has made since his youth. Most recently, he has returned to paintings of news photographs, exploring a striking and challenging new range of imagery.
25:47
theEYE: Gary Hume
Gary Hume makes beautiful paintings. His materials are household paints on aluminium surfaces and his subject's, he says, are "flora, fauna and portraits". The results are elegant, delicate, simple yet elusive and exquisite. Playing gloriously with colour and light, they are paintings of subtle tones, idiosyncratic clashes and insistent reflections.Interviewed in his studio, Gary Hume reflects on his work from the 1980s, when his Doors series won instant acclaim, to his latest creations. As so often, his new work balances recognisable images with abstraction. His people, like Kate (1996) and Michael (2001), are contemporary icons conjured up from bold shapes and strong planes of colour.Illustrated in this profile are many of Gary Hume's most notable paintings, specially filmed in exhibitions in London and Dublin, and in a major 2004 show in Bregenz, Austria. Also featured are the artist's rarely-seen drawings and, in contrasting settings, his deadpan sculpture Snowman (1997).
26:23
theEYE: Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin is one of the world's leading painters, whose art is admired both by critics and by a wide public. Beginning with a remembered experience, Hodgkin works on his seductive and complex paintings for long periods, characteristically producing richly coloured, sweeping compositions, which continue into the picture-frame itself. These paintings uniquely straddle representation and abstraction, at the same time as they demonstrate both an awareness of history and an understanding of art's potential today. Most recently, his interest in working in different scales, evident particularly in significantly larger paintings such as Americana and After Vuillard, demonstrates his concern to engage the viewer in new and challenging ways. In this interview, illustrated with many key paintings, Howard Hodgkin speaks with warmth and passion about how his methods, about his influences, about colour and composition, and about the fundamental importance of painting. "You need things to look at," he says simply, "things to affect your feelings, and your intelligence, and your heart."
26:22
theEYE: Gillian Ayres
Gillian Ayres studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1946-50, before running the AIA Gallery with painter Henry Mundy whom she married. As a young artist in the 1950's, Ayres was closely involved with leading British abstract artists including Roger Hilton. Ayres was quick to respond to European tachism and American abstract expressionism, creating a body of work that placed her in the forefront of her generation. In the sixties she was the only woman artist to be represented in the important 'Situation' exhibitions, showing large paintings combining oil and paint that aimed for the sublime using very radial drip and pour techniques of action painting. Gillian Ayres defined her career by ranges of style and manner. In the sixties she created glamorous and decorative images in keeping with the hedonistic mood of that time. In the seventies Hans Hofmann inspired Ayres and returned back to an extreme and painterly extraction. Later in that decade Ayres moved back to oil painting and went on to develop her exclusive colourful style and has made an impressive mark on British art.
26:06
theEYE: Julian Opie
"I often feel that trying to make something realistic is the one criteria I can feel fairly sure of. Another one I sometimes use is, would I like to have it in my room? And I occasionally use the idea, if God allowed you to show him one thing to judge you by, would this really be it?" Julian Opie's highly distinctive depictions of the modern world are created in an extraordinary variety of media. His bold portraits, subtle landscapes, unconventional wallpaper, playful sculptures of animals, buildings and cars, computer films and much more present simplified and iconic versions of the contemporary environment. In a richly-illustrated interview ranging from his cut-metal sculptures of the early 1980s to the cool minimalism of his cover art for the best of blur CD, Julian Opie reflects on his ways of working, on exposing art in unconventional surroundings, on his sense of the world around him, and on his use of computers which today allow him not to have to construct any of his artworks in the traditional way.
26:33
theEYE: Hamish Fulton
Hamish Fulton describes himself as a "walking artist". For more than thirty years he has undertaken demanding walks in many parts of the world, and drawn on his experiences to create distinctive artworks using text, graphics and photographs. He aims to "leave no trace" in the landscape, and he acknowledges that his art cannot represent the experience of a walk. "What I'm interested in," he explains, "is presenting a sort of skeleton of something, and then the viewer fills in what's missing, maybe from your own experience." Although they exhibit a striking consistency in their concerns, Hamish Fulton's artworks can exist as large-scale wall paintings and as modest publications, as graphics to compete with advertising hoardings and as online animations. They are informed both by spiritual ideas and by political questions prompted by our uses of the environment and by specific issues such as land rights. Made alongside Hamish Fulton's large-scale 2002 exhibition at Tate Britain, this profile features both an extensive range of the artist's work made since 1971 and an engaging interview in which he outlines his ideas.
31:37
theEYE: Sam Taylor-Wood
Many of Sam Taylor-Wood's distinctive photographs and films depict an affluent and fashionable social scene. But her concerns are often isolation and anxiety, conflict and alienation. Her art is alluring and disarming, and also frequently formally inventive. She uses multiple screens, still images combined with sound, and complex interior views conjured up with a panoramic camera. Among her earliest photographs are confrontational and sexually charged self-portraits. Recently, after two periods of treatment for cancer, she has returned to exploring, both directly and allusively, images of herself. Religion too has become a focus for many of her artworks, which at times echo and extend the forms of religious art of the past. In this film, which features extracts from many key works including 16mm, Brontosaurus and Still Life, Sam Taylor-Wood reflects on her concerns and ways of working, on autobiography in her art, and on sex and death.
25:21
theEYE: Chris Ofili
In 2003 Chris Ofili created the spectacular installation within reach for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Combining a cycle of paintings depicting lovers in a Paradise-like garden with a shimmering glass dome, Ofili plunged visitors into disorienting spaces of dense colour and enveloping light. Shot in London, Germany and Venice, this film relates the creation of Within Reach. Chris Ofili's reflections on the process are complemented by interviews with his collaborator in Venice, architect David Adjaye, and the structural engineer from Arup Associates, who helped realise the complex dome. Also included is an exploration of The Upper Room, an installation of 13 exquisite canvases by Ofili, which was first shown in 2002. Both this and Within Reach are about "trying to create an atmosphere for people to feel somehow out of themselves." His aim, the artist explains, is to "do something that is sincerely interesting and can honestly enhance the experience of looking."
25:56
theEYE: Karl Weschke
Karl Weschke's impressive, complex paintings picture the human figure and the landscape, the everyday and the mythical. His subjects include dogs and drowned bodies, creatures from legends and, increasingly in recent years, the monumental ruins of ancient Egypt. For more than fifty years, he has explored the possibilities of painting and its relevance to an uncertain world. Produced alongside a retrospective at Tate St Ives, with additional paintings from British collections, this film profiles the artist in the Cornwall that has been his home since 1955. Filmed in and around his studio and in the coastal landscape that informs all of his work, Weschke speaks engagingly about his rich, remarkable life and about many of his most significant canvases. Like his work, the painter is serious, intense, spare - and yet also with an appealing streak of mischief.
29:06
theEYE: Anish Kapoor
In October 2002 Anish Kapoor completed his extraordinary sculpture Marsyas for The Unilever Series of commissions in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London. A challenging and overwhelming artwork, Marsyas is a vast red PVC membrane stretched between three massive steel rings. The title refers to a satyr in Greek mythology who was flayed alive by the god Apollo. This film follows the making of Marsyas, from the earliest maquettes to the complex installation at Tate. Anish Kapoor comments on each stage of the process, and on the ideas and concerns of his art. Also illustrated are a range of his other sculptures and two recent large-scale works: Sky Mirror in Nottingham and Taratantara, created for the empty shell of Baltic as this new art centre was being built in Gateshead.
 

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