Press coverage

The Observer Review, 30 April 1995

Isle of Man Examiner, 15 February 1994:
"Queen’s Pier, two sidecar race teams, female body builders and a Loaghtan sheep are set to feature in a film being shot in the Isle of Man. And what's more, as part of the film, the island itself will turn into a body. The bizarre project is the work of American visual artist and film maker Matthew Barney and has come about partly thanks to the Department of Tourism's bid to promote the Isle of Man as an ideal location for film making. Local rider and sidecar champion Dave Molyneux has been signed up to make his acting debut in the extravaganza. Matthew, from New York, was commissioned to do a television movie by the Artangel Trust. He was on his way to Ireland to find a location but had heard about the island so decided to take a look." (Paul Speller)

The Observer Review, 30 April 1995:
"Matthew Barney has many faces, but the one you'll be most likely to encounter on fly posters if you're wandering around London over the next month or so is that of a flamboyantly white-suited, red-haired, perky-eared satyr called the Loughton Candidate. He is dancing. His white-toed brown brogues are impeccable. He seems intensely untrustworthy. He is one of the main characters in a complex, pulsating video called Cremaster 4. For those not well acquainted with medical parlance, the cremaster muscles are responsible for controlling the temperature of the testicles by retracting them into the body. And the 4? Well, this particular art project - a combination of sculpture, performance and video, set on the Isle of Man - is one of a series of at least five. Others will be located in an Idaho stadium, on a glacier, in the Chrysler tower and, says Barney, somewhat furtively in his soft American drawl, "someplace further east, in a bathhouse"." (Nicola Barker)

Flash Art International, volume XXVII, no. 176, May - June 1994:
"The subject in Cremaster 4 is a place, a zone: the Isle of Man. All the action is defined by this small chunk of earth in the sea, and the Latin motto attached to it Quocunque Jeceris Stabit reflects a particular idea of primeval balance which all the supporting actors share in the convergent point of the film. Is there symbolism in Cremaster 4? No! The images themselves are like symbols but unlike ordinary symbols they cannot be deciphered. For now, what we are allowed to understand is a feeling like Tolstoy's dying Ivan Dyich where both viewer and fictional character are confined inside a narrow groin pipe and have quite a few problems getting out of it." (Francesco Bonami)

Art Monthly, volume 1, issue 187, June 1995:
"Ascending and descending movements dominate the quests of Barney and the bikers, and the point where the quests converge is occupied by a Loughton ram - a species which has one pair of horns pointing up and another pointing down. Images of genitality and nongenitality dominate the work: at the beginning of the film Barney reveals two stumps on his head where he once had horns; and the gifts of the faeries are notably testicular (at one point they momentarily fit one of the sidecars with a well-endowed wheel)." (Mark Sladen)

The Independent, 29 April 1995:
"Exposure to Matthew Barney's Brave New World, with its arcane mythological beings, strange rites and personal iconography, admits only two responses: bewildered admiration or stunned indifference. His works are rituals and scenes of psychic and sexual conflict, of private yearnings and desires. Amongst the lapiths and centaurs, the gods and men, we find footballers, boy-racers and post-Freudian gladiators playing out an ancient gameplan in the Elysian fields of art." (Adrian Searle - read full article)