Having been shown at the Barbican late 20124, the documentary first on British artist Chris Gollon, ‘CHRIS GOLLON: Life in Paint’ (85mins) now has its International Premiere, tickets/info here: DOC’N ROLL NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL NYC. The film shows how Gollon's pioneering use of music, lyrics from Bob Dylan, and collaborations with musicians Thurston Moore, Grammy-nominated classical virtuoso Yi Yao and Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy, helped him keep painting alive in a time when people were saying "painting is dead".
Through found footage and BBC clips we get to know the artist as he disarmingly reveals his creative process and innovative techniques. Moving montages of Gollon’s images, combined with music by The Skids, Gavin Bryars, Sleaford Mods, Yi Yao and Eleanor McEvoy, give an insight into how Gollon fused the two, and how one energised or changed the other. The film shows how Chris Gollon was an incredibly sensitive painter of women, and also how his androgynous figures express a powerful common humanity.
Describing the surge of interest in Gollon's work since his untimely death in 2017, the film discusses the importance of his imagery to us in the 21st century. Three years in the making, produced by Peter Gerard Dunphy, and using BBC archive footage and found footage, interviews with Maggi Hambling, Thurston Moore, Eleanor McEvoy and art historians, ‘CHRIS GOLLON: Life in Paint’ (85mins) gives an insight into the artist's many technical innovations, his extraordinary imagination and his deep humanity.
