Jennet Thomas
THE UNSPEAKABLE FREEDOM DEVICE
4 July–22 August 2015
Symposium: Saturday 4 July
Grundy Art Gallery
Queen Street
Blackpool, FY1 1PU
UK
For summer 2015, the Grundy Art Gallery presents a new commission: THE UNSPEAKABLE FREEDOM DEVICE, an experimental narrative film and multimedia sculptural installation by artist Jennet Thomas.
The film presents a kind of absurd fairy tale in which a strange mythical tribe surrounding the ‘Blue Lady’, based on a memory of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, holds sway. The tribe takes a fictional pilgrimage through a future-primitive world where the difference between magic and technology is now forgotten.
Drawing on the heritage of party conferences in Blackpool, the exhibition explores questions concerning the representation and cultural memory of the former Prime Minister as a political leader and icon of our media age. More than anyone else, Margaret Thatcher came to be the most recognisable politician during the era when television began to dominate, and the one with the most substantial connection to Blackpool.
THE UNSPEAKABLE FREEDOM DEVICE establishes a fictional world with bizarre costumes and characters, creating a Victorian Sci-Fi aesthetic of Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, the final destination of the pilgrimage and the site of many of Thatcher’s most famous speeches at Party Conferences.
Partly inspired by a cartoon by political satirist Martin Rowson which appeared in The Guardian, the piece also draws on other key reference points such as Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
The project brings together key themes in the artist’s work including: fantasy emerging from the everyday, language and politics, belief systems, image manipulation technology, ideas of truth, power and pleasure, and how cultural memories are re-made, re-told and mythologised according to shifts in each era.
Symposium
Alongside the film and exhibition the gallery is also organising a day of talks and performances to take place on the opening Saturday (4 July) to discuss themes surrounding the artwork. Confirmed speakers include cartoonist Martin Rowson, writer Sally O’Reilly, writer theorist Esther Leslie, critic Jennifer Thatcher, historian Alwyn Turner and composer Leo Chadburn (also known as Simon Bookish), who wrote the soundtrack for the film. Tickets are 8 GBP (6 GBP concessions) including lunch, tea and coffee, and can be booked here.
A parallel book project called The Unspeakable Freedom Device, commissioned by Book Works, will also be launched at the event.
The symposium is organised in association with Modern Culture with support from Arts Council England.
About the artist
Jennet Thomas was co-founder of the Exploding Cinema Collective in the 1990s, her numerous film works have screened extensively in the international Film Festival arena (Rotterdam, Oberhausen, New York Underground Film Festival). Recent solo shows include School of Change and All Suffering Soon to End (Matt’s Gallery 2012 and 2010 respectively), Return of the Black Tower at PEER in 2007, and The Advice Shape at OUTPOST, Norwich, November 2010. Jennet Thomas is Senior Lecturer at Wimbledon School of Art, part of University of the Arts, London.