Your current browser and operating system is:
( Last Updated: 18-11-2011 )
Translating film to canvas
Alastair Barford has been announced as the winner of The Midas Award 2011, an art exhibition currently on show at the Millennium gallery in St Ives. Now in its sixth year, The Midas Award is an initiative between Midas Construction, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange in Penzance, Millennium gallery and University College Falmouth (UCF) to help new artists enter the professional contemporary art world.
There are many adaptations of books for film and the screen but possibly fewer examples of adaptations that convert scenes from films into paintings on canvas, especially when including cinematic effects such as motion blur and panning. Alastair is exploring this idea as an emerging artist.
When discussing his art he said: "My recent work has been concerned with the translation of cinematic sequences into single coherent painted images and explores the ways in which information is communicated. I often work from media images in order to explore the complex relationship between representation and reality. Treating the media image as primary source material, focus, depth of field, motion-blur and multiple-exposure are as much part of my subject matter as the people and events, which my paintings ostensibly portray."
Examples of Alastair's work include: a scene from ‘Pyscho' at the point when one scene fades into another; a cinematic shift in focus taken from the film ‘Downfall' and a translation of a 5 second cinematic sequence also taken from ‘Downfall,' a 2004 epic war film depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin Bunker in 1945.
Upon graduating from UCF with a First in BA(Hons) Fine Art in June, Alastair was also the recipient of the ‘Wilhemina Barnes Graham Travel to Italy Bursary', granted by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust, where he attended a two-week drawing course at the Charles H Cecil studios in Florence. He commented: "It has long been an ambition of mine to develop my artistic ability though a period studying the craft of painting and drawing. I would like to progress with my project of translating cinematic sequences by producing a 360-degree painted panorama based on a panning shot. It is my intention that, when exhibited, the painted panorama would surround and immerse the viewer much as we are immersed by films at the cinema."
Alastair will receive a year's supply of art materials, access to facilities at UCF and a solo show at Newlyn Art Gallery in the autumn of 2012.
The Midas Award 2011 show is open until 29 November with free admission and visitors can view works that span a range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, video, printmaking, modelling and installation. Alastair's work can be seen alongside the other five shortlisted artists: Susan Clarke; Clare Flawn; Andrew Gomez; Zoe Koperski; Emily Platzer; and last year's Midas Award winner, Katie Sims.
Top Picture
Midas Award winner Alistair Barford (centre) is pictured with Midas Construction's Martin Walton and Keith Hosen
Bottom picture
Midas Constructions Martin Walton, Stev Hindley CBE DL (Chairman Midas group), Katie Sims (Midas Award winner 2010) and Keith Hosen (Midas Construction)