LABoral will organize with the Film Festival a complete retrospective of Jack Chambers
The screenings will take place on Tuesday, June 16, at the Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto
Still of Circle, by Jack Chambers
Next Tuesday, June 16, after his stay in Barcelona, Madrid and Santiago de Compostela, the itinerant cycle dedicated to Jack Chambers stops in Gijon. The session is organized by LABoral and the International Film Festival of Gijon, in the framework of FICXLAB, a section of the Film Festival organized by the Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial aimed at introducing video art and cinema of experimental cut in that framework. Projections of the work of the renowned Canadian artist and filmmaker will take place in a double session in the Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto from six and eight o'clock in the afternoon.
Jack Chambers’s cinema was innovative and influential among his contemporaries. It has been written extensively about his films and his unique style. His prestigious career as a painter and his artistic practice, which was described as "perceptual realism", are located in counterpoint to the dominant abstract styles of his time. His films stand out in particular for its formal investigations of the properties of light and its thematic explorations of the cycle of life and death. His laboured use of the edition, of informative and photographic documents, recreates through his films these recurring themes of death and rebirth.
His first film, Mosaic (1965), introduces this model boldly, something that reappeared in Hybrid (1966) with the use of photographic images of the brutal ravages of war interspersed with planting and flower bud. Chambers then turned his camera to his friend, collaborator and colleague, the artist from London, Greg Curnoe in R34 (1967), and his creative documentary work continued with Circle (1969), with the portrait of the family garden landscape of the background filmed each day for a year from the same perspective. Chambers’ work culminates with his most transcendent film, The Hart of London, 79 minutes. This film joins newscasts and found footage with images created to build a more surreal document. The iconic footage of a lamb to be sacrificed, a deer hunted, abstraction of completely saturated images, of time and place, of life and loss. An original and biting narration filmed while he was fighting leukaemia, this was the last film of Chambers.
Jack Chambers (1931–1978) Born in London, Ontario, Chambers is considered one of the most important artists of Canada. He worked and studied during eight years in Europe (1953-1961), after studying in the University of Western Ontario. With a consolidated career as a painter, he embarked in a brief but significant career as filmmaker in the mid seventies. In his work he realized five films: Mosaic (1965), Hybrid (1966), R-34 (1967), Circle (1969) y The Hart of London (1970). After fighting ten years against leukaemia, Jack Chambers died in 1978 at the age of 47. His work it is on the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the London Museum. A primary school, the Jack Chambers Public School (ant the streets that surround it), have his name in London, Ontario.
