A one-hour programme of artist shorts together with related documentary and wider archival material, upon the occasion of Cassils’ first UK solo exhibition at HOME.
These include Cassils’ Hard Times (2010), Monument Push (2017) and 103 Shots (2016), together with documentary shorts that offer further insight upon key projects, ranging from Pissed (2018), Inextinguishable Fire (2016), Up To and Including Their Limits (2020), In Plain Sight (2020) and $SHT COIN (2021).
The shorts package branches out to include archival references of artists who have influenced Cassils’ practice. Made early in the prolific artist’s nearly fifty-year career, Harun Forecki’s Inextinguishable Fire (1969) is a critique of the Vietnam War and the role of industry in the production of chemical weapons.
In Judo Scenes (1953), we see a rare glimpse of a largely under-appreciated chapter in the life of Yves Klein, who earned his black belt from the Kôdôkan Institute in Tokyo in 1952 at the age of 24 and wrote the book Le Fondements du Judo (The Foundations of Judo). Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1960), captures what is more widely understood as Klein’s typical process, during which he paints the bodies of models who impress themselves upon canvas.
Cassils’ new work for stage, Human Measure Live, draws upon these aspects of Kline’s practice, but with uniquely different intentions.
We wish to thank Harun Forecki and the Yves Klein Archives for their support in securing permissions for this programme.
Content warning: contains brief scene of self-harm.
Image Credit: Cassils: Hard Times, photo Luke Gilford (detail)
Courtesy of the artist