The Endeavour; Mikhail Karikis
Date uploaded: April 13, 2015
Tyneside Cinema has announced a new commission by Mikhail Karikis, artist-in-residence in 2015. The Endeavour is an immersive evocation of the North East’s industrial past, forgotten trades and dialects, and a lyrical homage to historical protest and resistance. The work is being presented as a video and sound installation in The Gallery, the cinema’s new space for artists’ moving image.
The Endeavour records a boat being repaired in the North East’s last boatyard in the weeks before the boat builder’s retirement. Karikis observes in intimate detail the builder’s carefully choreographed craftsmanship, his hands wielding the tools of his ancient trade. From time to time, the rhythmic soundscape of the one hundred year old boatyard is interrupted by a local choir performing a roll call of seminal industrial protests from across the UK since the beginning of the last century, and the minstrel song The Swanee River, that was played on harmonica by the shipyard workers of the Jarrow March on their long walk to London in 1936.
The Endeavour is inspired by Dixon Scott, the polymath founder of Tyneside Cinema, and great uncle of filmmakers Ridley and Tony Scott. Karikis discovered connections in an intriguing long-lost encrypted notebook belonging to Scott, which revealed his deep interest in the North East’s industrial culture and labour movement. The work is Karikis’ third solo show in the UK, and his first in the North East. It continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of work as a common purpose, vanishing professions and community cohesion.
Mikhail Karikis is known for installation works that span film, performance and sound, often using the voice as sculptural material in socio-politically informed narratives. His recent work – Children of the Unquiet – focused around a children’s take-over of a deserted worker’s village and adjacent industrial and natural environment in a place famous for its legendary associations with Dante’s Inferno. Karikis has shown work internationally including 19th Biennale of Sydney, Mediacity Seoul, Palais de Tokyo and Tate Britain in 2014.
Karikis' new commission reflects Tyneside Cinema's long-standing commitment to supporting and exhibiting groundbreaking moving image artworks. The Gallery opened in September 2014 and has so far featured Tomorrow is Always Too Long by Phil Collins, Letter of Complaint by Rachel Reupke, The Chimera of M by Sebastian Buerkner, White Hole by John Smith, Chromatic Aberration by Aura Satz; Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s EDIT and 20,000 Days on Earth.
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