Manon de Boer’s film is a study of four young people improvising with dance and movement in an empty space. The camera follows each of them in turn, observing an intimate process of playful research into the body’s possible movements. It observes their absorption as they develop their own unscripted moves, sometimes merely sitting and thinking or dreaming. It explores a time of potentiality.
Commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Caco, João, Mava and Rebecca (From nothing to something to something else, part 2), (2019) is a sequel to the work Bella, Maia and Nick (From nothing to something to something else, part 1), (2018), which took its title from the names of three music students at Helston Community College, who were invited to spend time together at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, experimenting with sounds and rhythms. Bella, Maia and Nick was commissioned by CAST and presented at Kestle Barton for Groundwork in 2018.
The films are part of a developing trilogy that focuses on the time and space needed for experimentation and for the process of creation, the conditions in which it is possible to move ‘from nothing to something’.
Manon de Boer’s work is often described as a form of portraiture. A Dutch artist living in Brussels, she was educated at the Akademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Rotterdam and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited internationally, at the Venice Biennale (2007), Berlin Biennale (2008), São Paulo Bienal (2010), Documenta 13 (2012) and Taipei Biennial (2016), and has also been included in numerous international film festivals. A major exhibition of her work entitled Giving Time to Time was presented at Secession in Vienna in 2016.
Caco, João, Mava and Rebecca is installed at CAST as part of an international programme of artists’ films relating to landscape and portraiture. ‘Echoes and Returns’ looks back to moving image presentations at CAST in the last year, providing opportunities to see work by some of the artists shown in Groundwork and as part of the CAST Film Club series of screenings. Film installations by Melanie Smith, Francis Alÿs and Manon de Boer will each be shown for three weeks in CAST’s black box projection space.
This programme is made possible thanks to the generous support of Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange