Chris Welsby: British Artists Films

The BFI's British Artists' Films series produced in partnership with arts documentary producers Illuminations and Arts Council England features a wide selection of important film and video work by British artists from the last thirty years.

The second release focuses on the work of Chris Welsby, landscape artist and pioneer of the moving-image installation in Britain, whose subtle meditations are exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

Featured on the DVD are works from different stages in his career, uniquely tracing his development as an artist, from his early critical responses to British structural filmmaking and Minimalism of the 1970s to his mature, contemplative landscape works of the 1980s and 1990s.

The films are: Stream Line, Park Film,Windmill lll, Seven Days, Wind Vane, Sky Light, Drift, and River Yar (made with William Raban).

The twin-screen films River Yar and Wind Vane have been digitally remastered for this DVD to reproduce their original projection format.

Chris Welsby comments:

"Each of my films is a separate attempt to re-define the interface between 'mind' and 'nature'. In my work, the mechanics of film and video interact with the landscape in such a way that elemental processes – such as changes in light, the rise and fall of tide or changes in wind direction – are given the space and time to participate in the process of representation."

BONUS

• theFrame - Chris Welsby (2005) a half-hour interview including clips from many of his films and documentation of his installations
• Sleeve notes are by Laura Mulvey, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London.
• 20-page illustrated booklet containing a full annotated filmography