Bruce McLean and Gary Chitty
© Portrait by Gill Vaux. 2019
Last night saw the long awaited premiere of The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories (2019), Bruce McLeans new film made with director-producer Gary Chitty and commissioned by the Coronet Theatre. More than 30 years in the making, its creators describe this made-on-shoestring blockbuster as "a cardboard motion picture about ambition and the desire for infamy of an artist who wants to create the greatest landscape painting of all time”.
In the 1970s, McLean and Chitty co-founded the wonderfully debunking Nice Style, the worlds first 'pose band', and they continue to parody pretensions in their cinematic "cardboard catastrophe”, which takes hefty sideswipes at artistic hubris, stifling bureaucracy and megalomaniac political aspirations. The principal protagonists rendered in cardboard cutouts are a couture-clad heiress artist who burns down her fathers factory to create the perfect red sky and a politician who convenes a great summit between the North and South of the UK.
Still from Decorative Potential of Burning Factories by Bruce McLean and Gary Chitty (2019)
Image Courtesy The Coronet Theatre
Along the way there are flames, hats, helicopters, breakfast menus, costume changes, health and safety regulations, strangulated art-speak and a moveable iceberg, all set to a soaring operatic soundtrack. Last night there was also the added live element of McLean and Chitty performing with sculptural placards in front of the screen and before an audience which included the artists Antony Gormley, Ron Arad and John Smith.
Its a bold commission for Anda Winters, the Coronets artistic director and CEO who took over this much-loved Notting Hill landmark four years ago and has preserved it as anRead More – Source
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