09/06/2009

Turner-prize winning British artist and multiple award-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen is ready with his next film after Hunger [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laura Hastings-Smith Rob…
interview: Steve McQueen
film profile], Giardini. The 40-minute film will screen out of season in the British Pavilion at the ongoing Venice Biennale (June 7-November22).

The film is McQueen’s minutely observed take on one of Venice’s municipal gardens that hosts the national pavilions of the festival. In sharp contrast to the starkness of Hunger, Giardiniis in equal parts romantic, lyrical and melancholic.

McQueen said, “After two years of intense work – Hunger, the Biennale and the ongoing Queen and Country, my project to commemorate on postage stamps British servicemen and women killed in Iraq, which, I hope, with the support of the public, will be realised as real stamps – this will be one of those moments when I can catch my breath with my close friends and family and be with the ones I love.”

Half of Giardini’s funding came from The Art Fund and Outset Contemporary Art Fund with the remaining half secured through the Marian Goodman Gallery.

Andrew Macdonald, acting director of The Art Fund, said, “Steve McQueen is an exceptional artist who has won many accolades. The Art Fund is delighted to be working with Outset on funding this new work, and to be able together to give an edition of it to a UK public collection in due course. This will be announced in autumn 2009.”

The Venice Biennale will also feature works by Mark Lewis and Ming Wong. The artist filmmakers, supported through the Film London Artists’ Moving Network (FLAMIN), will respectively present their works Romance and Life of Imitation.