David Blandy (UK, London) : The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim

Video art/ Performance/ Public Talk

Curator: David Thorp

Opening Party: 2007 March Friday 16th , 6 pm with live performance of the artist

Public Talk: 2007 March Saturday 17th , 3 pm with curator David Thorp and artist David Blandy

Exhibition Time: 2007.3.16 – 2007.4.15

Venue: Platform China 798 Project Space

Opening Hours: 11:00 – 18:00（Closed On Monday）

Address: 798 Art District, Jiuxianqiaolu n°4, 798 Zhongyi Jie -D, / Chaoyang District / Beijing
Tel: 0086 10 6432 0169 / 6432 0091 / 64388451 (Project Space)

www.platformchina.org
www.davidblandy.co.uk

With support from the British Council

We are very happy to present you The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim, a video installation by the very talented UK artist David Blandy. The artist will be present on the opening and he will do a special performance followed by an open talk between David Blandy and the curator David Thorp.

David Blandy’s work deals with his problematic relationship with popular culture, highlighting the slippage and tension between fantasy and reality in everyday life. Either as a white man mouthing the words to the underground soul classic "Is it because I’m black" in "hollow bones" (2001), or being taught how to make art by the deceased martial arts star Bruce Lee in "emotional content" (2003), Blandy is searching for his cultural position in the world. He often uses humour to ask the difficult question of just how much the self is formed by the mass-media of records, films and television, and whether he has an identity outside that.    

The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim

In the Barefoot Lone Pilgrim video/performance pieces, Blandy integrates real life and virtual adventures. Donning the orange robes of a Buddhist Shaolin Monk, portable record player in hand, the Lone Pilgrim has been a hermit in an 18th Century park in Surrey, made an American road trip, and searched for the places that had associations with soul songs in New York.

In Soul of the Lakes, the Lone Pilgrim walked between the only two record shops in the Lake District in the north of England, searching for soul. Intercutting the footage of the real journey with segments from films such as Shogun Assassin and Princess Mononoke and television programmes Kung Fu and Monkey, the film of the performance weaves together an idiosyncratic tale of self-discovery which is all the more believable for its shifts into fantasy and personal reverie.