Unstilled Life

Animation is an increasingly vibrant – indeed, animated – medium for artists, and enlivens a virtual platform. For Unstilled Life, the exhibition’s curators Paul Carey Kent and Emma Cousin selected 13 films that can relate to each other in a space that is activated, immediate and intimate – into people’s phones, screens and living rooms – even at a time of distancing.

More fundamentally, digitalisation, post-production and simulation have thoroughly undermined the indexical relationship of film to its origin in time, as a succession of moments preserved. Animation might be seen as more honest. There’s no disguising its source in imagination. Artists can create worlds which stem not from representation, but from freely extending their particular languages and concerns. It follows that these are not technically-driven films: the art comes first, and that’s often served best by quite simple approaches. We have chosen films in which artists bring their interests to life in this way, allowing them to add movement, time, words and sound to what is conventionally available to, for example, the painter or sculptor.