Ourhouse, Ep. -1: Time
Ourhouse, Ep.-1: Time (2016) is Mellors’ most ambitious film to date and takes place inside the ‘northern wing’ of the house, a Brutalist extension that uses Preston’s iconic bus station as its exterior façade. Populated by a tribe of smart Neanderthals and a filthy cluster of cannibalistic Homo sapiens, the film incorporates devices from prehistory as a means of exploring contemporary socio-economic and political issues, class, the objectification of the ‘other’ and our complex relationship with technology.
Starring Richard Bremmer, Patrick Kennedy, Laura Dee Milnes, Johnny Vivash, Benedict Hopper, David Birkin, and Brian Catling
Nathaniel Mellors’ most ambitious film to date opens at the Harris Museum
The Neanderthal Container
Nathaniel Mellors new video work Neanderthal Container (2014) features the reappearance of the character Mellors created for his film The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview (2012-13) in the form of a Neanderthal stunt-dummy in permanent free-fall. As well as filming the figure falling and bouncing off trees, plants and buildings in and around Los Angeles, Mellors dropped the Neanderthal figure from a plane over the San Joaquin Valley. Mellors conceived the falling figure as depicting an “absolute exterior” and these sequences are punctuated by more psychedelic video fragments depicting the Neanderthal’s interior – a film-set populated by four different versions of the Neanderthal character who reflect on their condition and position “inside the Neanderthal stunt-dummy… which is actually a spaceship.”
Starring Patrick Kennedy
Premiered at the 2014 Taipei Biennial along with photographic prints and animatronic sculptures.
The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview
Starring Patrick Kennedy & David Birkin. Produced by Commonwealth Projects (Los Angeles) and Film London for Channel 4's Jarman Award / Random Acts slot. Part of the 'The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview' (Hammer Museum, January 2014). Made with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, Hammer Museum, Film London, Galerie Diana Stigter, MONITOR, Matt's Gallery & Temple Bar Gallery.
British artist Nathaniel Mellors makes irreverent, absurd and hilarious videos, sculptures, performances and writings that challenge our notions of taste, morality, and intelligence. His seminal series, Ourhouse (2010- ongoing), features a cast of misfit characters enacting the decline of an eccentric British family. A more recent work, The Saprophage (2012), examines the literal and metaphoric waste produced by contemporary society.
Mellors’ Hammer Projects exhibition centers around his newly completed film The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview (produced in collaboration with Commonwealth Projects during a residency at the Hammer). The 35mm/HD transfer film features an interview between an ethereal “modern” man (Truson, a character from Ourhouse) and an apparently real Neanderthal. The Neanderthal is cleverer than Truson and plays with him and his expectations of primitivism. The interview appears to take place in a version of the mythic “Eden” (“E-Den”), and was filmed in the historic Bronson Caves in Griffith Park.
Premiered in 2014 at The Hammer Museum
The Saprophage
Part of the installation 'Recent Collaborations Before THE SAPROPHAGE' at MONITOR, Rome 30th November 2012 - Jan 26th 2013.