Art & Humour: What Could be and What is

Artist Nathaniel Mellors talks about comedy and its existing and possible intersections with art.

This is the second of the two 'Frieze Magazine at Wide Open School' events.

Approximate duration: 90 minutes.

Nathaniel Mellors (b.1974, Doncaster, UK)
Nathaniel Mellors makes films and sculptural environments that probe and parody the complex relationship between language and power. Using and usurping the formats of mainstream entertainment, his works are inventive crossovers between visual art, music, theatre and text. They draw their inspiration from popular icons of cinema and theatre as well as from literature, revelling in surreal aspects of humour and language from vaudeville, Samuel Beckett and Monty Python to Rabelais and Jonathan Swift. Mellors describes his ambitious video project Ourhouse, parts of which were shown at the Hayward Gallery last year in British Art Show 7, as 'British sitcom meets [Pasolini's 1968 film] Teorema'. Its absurdist script and idiosyncratic imagery challenge comprehension and rationality and play with the concerns of contemporary art.