Ivan Unwin

Born - 1960 - Bedfordshire England - "I progressed through an uninspiring education with the soundtrack accompaniment of glam rock, my father, constantly promoted within General Motors meant we moved around England a few times before ending up in Belgium in 1975, one move to many, my father died 1976. A freak meeting with Mr Warhol at a gallery opening in Brussels captivated my youthful exhilaration towards painting, art and life. Moving back to Bedfordshire, thankfully this was 1977 and also the year I entered into the world of art education, another art school punk with a new life soundtrack." "The work that i made whilst at college had an end result being film / video art. This was where the combination of many disciplines, for me, became one , from the initial drafting of ideas - making things - environments - creating an atmosphere with paint and light, developing a story board or event, then filming it with out of date super 8 film, editing and inventing a soundtrack. all fine under the cozy umbrella of youth, and blind collaboration with the many talented friends around." "These films by hook or by crook, mainly by crook, were made into a video collection of work, released by ikon / factory records in 1985. Titled "Flickering Shadows". This was also when I moved to London and found a kind of survival existence on Arts Council funding and medical research, it all ended when my body was deemed inadequate, the cash ran thin but with the screenings of my films at the Institute of Contemporary Art, National Film Theatre and revues in the NME came employment in the music video industry." "I made two more films around this time, combining the film industry waste materials and a good income to make ECLIPSE an Arts Council of Great Britain funded project and TOXIC a C4 and ACGB funded short film." "'Toxic' was made with the massive help of Mac he was the main link in the squat club scene, assisting where ever i could, projecting film loops and developing an interventional terrorist performance art, i was given the top floor of the Slimelight in angel as a studio, this is where i was able to build the machines and three 30ft whales required for this film. Filmed in Cornwall with Malcolm Whitehead ( Ikon ) as camera man." "'Eclipse' was made with the grateful assistance of the 33 Art Center Luton, i was given a large derelict area at the back of the film theatre that i was able to build the main set and live in during this time and while filming, survival was porridge and free meals from the visiting hare krishna, I have few pleasant memories of this entire production 4 or 5 years in the making, though visually I know I achieved more than in earlier works the toll it took on me made further film projects less desirable to initiate. I put away further ideas and storyboards." "At this time I also concluded the performance work - Septic Kz - this was performed in Glasgow at Transmission gallery, Berlin at Mutant Monsters and Myths festival and finally London at The Brixton academy, a terrorist horror that utilized my availability of theatrical pyrotechnics, this had many running to the doors." "Between 1990 to 2005 I worked on many music videos, creatively fulfilled in this occupation of designing sets, putting together a budget and a crew to studio build the set, production would then shoot the video, after which we would smash it all down. A crazy activity that went on and on. The directors that I worked for started to get TV advert commercial work and I was to join them, the musicians and bands now replaced with the suits of the corporate world the fun and adventure became less and less the cash became more and more the time in between projects for endless pre production got longer, after 9/11 and the tube bombing in London, the opportunity came to make the move in 2006 to my wife's homeland - Oh Canada." "During the down time in between productions, while renovating a cottage on the West of Scotland I had started to re familiarize my self with painting - landscape - rain soaked atmospheric work, initially to help with the communication of painterly matters to the very talented but wayward scenic artists, but soon it was again a gripping vocation." "With the move to Canada I had continued to explore landscape, and started to introduced some light political ideas into the works such as "where the buffalo roam" and "where the buffalo roamed". Having struggled with the 2D human representation, I produced a self portrait - the "Evil" trilogy this conected to my earlier work and opened up a whole new direction which since 2008 I have been exploring and developing." "An end to be continued."