In Reid Kelley’s first solo exhibition in a European museum, the Kunsthalle Bremen presents her four- part film cycle on the First World War. The black-and-white films, based on extensive research, oscillate between drawings that are brought to life and stop-motion animation. The artist combines her concise aesthetic, which ironically synthesizes art-historical styles such as Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism, with sophisticated wordplay in rhyming verse. By emphasizing inflated artificiality in both the language and the visual images, Reid Kelley explores the radical effect that dramatic historical events have had on changes in identity, gender roles, behaviour, sexuality and speech.
Curated by Eva Fischer-Hausdorf
“A Marquee Piece of Sod”. The WWI films of Mary Reid Kelley
Kunsthalle Bremen
Am Wall 207
28195 Bremen
10 September 2016 – 19 February 2017
Mary Reid Kelley, Sadie, the Saddest Sadist (still), 2009