Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle / Cremaster Field
25 October - 14 November 2002
The Ritzy Cinema, Brixton, London SW2
Matthew Barney, Cremaster 3 (2002). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery © Matthew Barney
Completing his new three-hour film Cremaster 3 in 2002, acclaimed US artist Matthew Barney finished the epic Cremaster Cycle in 2002 - the most debated, most celebrated film project by a contemporary artist over that decade. Cremaster 3 crafts an elaborate tale of creation and destruction, a psycho-sexual odyssey of competing drives and desires which shifts in time and space from the Chrysler Building to the Giants' Causeway.
Presented by Artangel at Brixton's Ritzy Cinema, for the first time the five films of The Cremaster Cycle were screened in sequence. Stretching from Barney's home town football stadium in Boise Idaho to its tragic climax in the Budapest State Opera, House, via the Salt Flats of Utah and the TT course in the Isle of Man, The Cremaster Cycle offers a unique, unparalleled cinematic experience.
Alongside the only UK screenings of Cremaster 3, the Ritzy cinema also hosted Cremaster Field, a new sculpture by Matthew Barney made on site with ten tons of Vaseline and a pentagram of plasma screens. And both screenings and sculpture coincided with Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle, an exhibition of the films, related sculpture, photographs and drawings that toured from the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris to the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
The Cremaster Cycle and Cremaster Field were presented in London by Artangel in association with Time Out, Zoo Cinemas and The Ritzy, this project was supported by Arts Council England, Special Angels and The Company of Angels.
