Contact Information

For festival packages, please contact:
Larissa Tilbury
Senior Business Travel Consultant at Scott’s Tours

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For further information on AngloMockBa, please contact Liberatum:
General enquiries: E-mail

Media/Press and Official Communications:
Andrea Ware
Press and Communications Manager
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Programme (English)

Friday – May 1, 2009

19.30 – 21.30
FAIRY TALES AND PRINCE OF JOKES
The Most
(Кuznetsky Most, 6/3
tel. )

Private Dinner Russian and British guests share their favourite jokes and fairy tales over dinner Attendance: By invitation only

23.00
ORBITING
At The Most
Party, Music and Dance
DJs: Musician William Orbit and Russian DJ
Attendance: Guest list only: [email protected]

Saturday – May 2, 2009

12.00-18.00
CINEMA BRITANNIA

British Film screening at Sergei Eisenstein Library
Karetnuy Ryad, 5/10, str 2
(495) 699-35-86

12.00 A Man with a camera (Dziga Vertov & Michael Nyman)
14.00 Chromophobia (Martha Fiennes)
16.00 The Queen (Stephen Frears)
Attendance: information at the Library

11.00 – 12.00
MOMENTS OF CONTEMPLATION
Opening Ceremony
Swissotel Krasnye Holmy

Kosmodamianskaya naberezhnaya, 52, str 6495) 660-06-95

Novel Readings by Olga Slavnikova (Russian Booker Prize Winner 2006)
Lucy Freud’s Video Presentation and Talk
Guitar & Folk Performances
Press Conference
Attendance: [email protected]

12.00 -13.30
THE POLITICS OF LIFE
At Swissotel Krasnye Holmy
In Association with bmi
Photography Exhibition by Alexandr Astafiev
British GQ Editor in Chief, Dylan Jones discusses his new book about the British Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron MP with Hugo Rifkind
A 5 Minute Clip on the Current State of British Politics
Followed by a short Q&A with audience

Honorary Guests: TV presenter Dmitriy Dibrov, Alexander Budberg, Political Observer and John Harrison, Passport Magazine editor

Attendance: [email protected]

14.00 – 16.00
Lunch at John Donne Pub

Nikitskiy Bulvar, 12

Private Event

16.30 for 17.00

17.00-20.00

THE CAMERA DOESN’T LIE
At ABC Salon of Fine Arts
Ulitza Petrovka, 25
(
Reception/Drinks
Photography Exhibition by Svetlana K-Lie ‘Vesna, Hempel – 2008’
Michael Nyman’s Piano Recital

FLESH AND BUTTERFLIES
At ABC Salon of Fine Arts, Petrovka
Atomic Forms – Flesh as Canvas: A special peformance by AMOS

Photographer Amanda Eliasch discusses her new book ‘Cloak & Dagger Butterfly’ with Svetlana K-Lie
Attendance: By Invitation Only

Sunday – May 3, 2009

11.00 for 11.30
THE DIRECTORS’ GREY CELLS
at Eisenstein Library

11.30 – Welcome speeches by bmi, Swissotel and organisers

11.45 – A panel discussion on the art of film adaption and women role in today’s cinema world: Andrei Konchalovsky, Martha Fiennes, Danny Moynihan, Stephen Frears, Renata Litvinova, Pavel Lungin, Pavel Bardin, Petr Fedorov, Igor Voloshin, Sergei Solovyov and Pavel Sanaev

Hosted by Danny Moynihan
Q&A from the Audience
Attendance: [email protected]

13.15 Presentation and Premier
Rossiya 88
Attendance: [email protected]

16.00
A STOP AT THE GARAGE
At the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture (GCCC)
Ulitza Obraztsova, 19a
Tel 645 0520

Michael Nyman’s Video Art Presentation
Q&A – Michael Nyman
Gavin Turk, Michael Craig-Martin and Danny Moynihan – Discussion on Art

Hosted by Danny Moynihan
Attendance: [email protected]

19.00
A RESTAURANT CALLED CHOCOLATE
At Chocolate Restaurant
Private Dinner

20.30
PREVAILING TASTE
At Chocolate
103006, B.Putinkovsky pereulok, 5
(495) 787 88 66

Screening of Daphne Guinness’ ‘The Phenomenology of Body’
New collections by Svetlana Tegin
Stephen Jones and William Orbit – Fashion and Music
Q&A – Henry Holland with Andrei Sharov Hosted by Anna Jackson-Stevens
Tatiana H-S, Russian milliner presents her hat design collection
Attendance: [email protected]

23.00
DASVIDANYA MOCKBA
At Simachev Bar
Stoleshnikov per, 12 str 2
629 8085

Closing Party

Private event

Programme (Russian)

Пятница – 1 мая

19.30 – 21.30
СКАЗКИ И КОРОЛИ СМЕХА
Клуб The Most
(Кузнецкий мост, 6/3
тел. )
Частный ужин

Российские и британские гости делятся своими любимыми сказками и обмениваются любимыми анекдотами за ужином.

ВХОД: по спецприглашениям.

23.00 ПО ОРБИТЕ С ОРБИТОМ
Клубная вечеринка.
Клуб «Мост».
DJ Уильям Орбит
ВХОД: гест-лист [email protected]
Суббота – 2 мая

12.00-18.00

КИНО BRITANIA
Показ британских фильмов в библиотеке Сергея Эйзенштейна

Библиотека Эйзенштейна
Тел. (495) 699-35-86
г. Москва, Каретный ряд, д.5/10, стр.2

12.00 «Человек с камерой» (Дзига Вертов и Майкл Найман)
14.00 Chromophobia (Martha Fiennes)
16.00 The Queen (Stephen Frears)
ВХОД : за информацией обращаться в Библиотеку Эйзенштейна

11.00-12.00
МОМЕНТЫ СОЗЕРЦАНИЯ
Церемония открытия фестиваля
Swissotel «Красные холмы»
Космодамианская наб., 52, стр 6.
тел (495) 660-06-95
Чтение отрывков из произведений Ольги Славниковой (Победитель премии Русский Букер 2007) в исполнении автора.
Видеопрезентация и представление работ Люси Фрейд.
Гитарная и фольклорная музыка.

Пресс-конференция.
ВХОД: свободный, пресса по аккредитации
[email protected]

12.00 – 13.30
ПОЛИТИКА ЖИЗНИ
В Swissotel «Красные Холмы»
Совместно с авиакомпанией bmi
Выставка фотографий Александра Астафьева.
Презентация новой книги Дилана Джонса о лидере консервативной партии Великобритании Давиде Камероне, при участии редактора газеты «Таймс» Хьюго Рифкинда.
Показ 5-минутного документального фильма о состоянии британской политики на сегодня.

Вопросы-ответы.

Почетные гости – телеведущий Дмитрий Дибров, политический обозреватель Александр Будберг и редактор журнала «Паспорт» Джон Харрисон

ВХОД: свободный, пресса по аккредитации
[email protected]

14.00 – 16.00
Обед в John Donne Pub.
Никитский бульвар, 12,
т. 627-69-07
Закрытое мероприятие

16.30

17.00 – 20.00
КАМЕРА НЕ ЛЖЕТ
Совместно с ABC Gallery.
Салон Изящных Искусств
улица Петровка, 25
Телефон: (
(канапе, напитки)
Выставка «Vesna, Hempel-2008”
Svetlana K-Lie

Мини-концерт Майкла Наймана.

ПЛОТЬ И БАБОЧКИ

В Салоне Изящных Искусств на Петровке.
Атомные формы – тело в роли холста.
Уникальное представление АМОС.
Фотограф Аманда Элиах обсуждает свою книгу «Плащ и кинжал-бабочка» с Cветланой K-Lie
ВХОД: по спецприглашениям
Воскресенье – 3 мая, 2009

11.30
ВСТРЕЧА РЕЖИССЕРОВ

Библиотека Эйзенштейна
11.30 – приветственное слово от представителей авиакомпании bmi, Swisshotel и организаторов
11.45 – Дискуссионная панель «Экранизация книг» при участии Андрея Канчаловского, Дани Мойнигана, Стивена Фриерса , Марты Файнс и Ренаты Литвиновой.

Почетные гости : Павел Лунгин, Петр Федоров, Павел Бардин, Игорь Волошин, Сергей Соловьев и Павел Санаев

Ведущий Дани Мойниган
Вопросы-ответы от аудитории
ВХОД: гест-лист [email protected]

13.15
Презентация и премьера фильма «Россия 88»

ВХОД : за информацией обращаться в Библиотеку Эйзенштейна

16.00
ОСТАНОВКА В «ГАРАЖЕ»
«Гараж» – Центр современной культуры
Образцова, 19а., Метро Менделеевская
Телефон: 645 0520
Видео Презентация Майкла Наймана
Вопросы и ответы – Майкл Найман и Мириам Бланделл.

Гэвин Турк, Майкл Грейг-Мартин и Дэнни Мойниган беседуют о вдохновении и обмениваются мыслями о будущем британского искусства.
Ведущий – Дэнни Мойниган.
УЧАСТНИКИ: [email protected]

19.00
РЕСТОРАН «ШОКОЛАД»

Частный ужин.

20.30
ФАШЕН ДИСКАШЕН
Ресторан «Шоколад»
103006, Москва
Б. Путинковский переулок, д. 5
(Страстной бульвар)
(495) 787-88-66
Показ фильма Дафни Гиннесс «Феноменология тела».
Новая коллекции Светланы Тегин.
Стивен Джонс и Уильям Орбит – Мода и музыка.
Генри Холланд и Андрей Шаров отвечают на вопросы. Ведущая – Анна Джексон-Стивенс.
Татьяна H-S, российский дизайнер шляп, представляет свою новую коллекцию.
ВХОД: гест-лист [email protected]

23.00
До свиданья, Москва
Вечеринка закрытия,
«Симачев-бар»
Столешников пер., 12, стр. 2.,
Телефон: 629 8085
Закрытое мероприятие.

Biographies

William Orbit
William Orbit has been in high demand as a producer and remixer for well over a decade, most famously working with Madonna on her 1998 album Ray Of Light, which received four Grammy Awards, sold 4 million copies in the U.S., and sold 16 million copies worldwide.

He has also collabored with U2, Blur, Gwen Stefani, Sugababes, Depeche Mode, Pink, Kraftwerk, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Beth Orton and scores of other artists. Consequently, his own music has often taken a back seat, with long gaps between releases. His last solo album, 2006’s Hello Waveforms, was his first in six years, and only his second in 11. This recent renewal of activity came out of a radical rethink of his working methods.

Orbit also produced a version of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (the original version of which was memorably used as the main theme of the soundtrack to Platoon). Adagio was lifted from the successful album Pieces in a Modern Style which was a compilation of classical re-workings. Orbit’s version of the track was itself remixed in 1999 by Ferry Corsten and became a big club music hit.

My Oracle Lives Uptown, Orbit’s eighth under his own name, was recorded at his own Guerilla Studios, in a succession of home locations since the late 90s.

Lucy Freud
Lucy Freud is the third of four children to artists Lucian Freud and Katherine McAdam. Lucy grew up in a very creative household where drawing and painting was part of everyday life. Originally she shied away from the ‘family business’ but now, after having brought up her own children, she has decided to return to her first true love – Art. Lucy is now in her fourth year of a fine art degree as a mature student at Wimbledon School of Art but also regularly attends life-drawing classes at the Royal Academy Schools.

Dylan Jones
Dylan Jones is the Editor of British GQ. He studied design and photography at Chelsea School of Art and St. Martins School of Art in London before becoming the Editor of i-D magazine in 1984. He has since been an Editor at The Face, Arena, The Observer and The Sunday Times. He has won the BSME Editor of the Year award seven times, once for his work on Arena (1993), and five times for GQ (2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008). He has published an international best-selling biography of Jim Morrison (Dark Star, 1990), a biography of Paul Smith (True Brit, 1995) and two anthologies of journalism (Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy and Sex, Power and Travel, both 1996). iPod, Therefore I Am (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) was published in 2005, Mr Jones Rules (Hodder & Stoughton) in 2006 and his latest book Cameron on Cameron (Harper Collins) has just been published.

Henry Holland
Henry Holland graduated from London College of Printing with a BA Journalism, starting his imaginative slogan Tees in 2006 as a bit of an in-joke, when Giles Deacon and Gareth Pugh took their London catwalk bows wearing each others respective House of Holland “Fashion Groupies” T-shirts: “UHU Gareth Pugh” worn by Giles and “Get Your Freak On Giles Deacon” worn by Gareth, it catapulted him into the international fashion arena, and within 3 months, his celebrity fanbase included: Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Marc Jacobs, Christopher Kane, Richard Nicoll and Fergie (Black Eyed Peas), and buyers from stores such as Barneys in New York were urging him to come up with exclusive slogans just for their customers.
By late 2008, it was clear that London had a new power couple, Henry Holland and his long-standing best friend model Agyness Deyn, flown to international fashion events such as American Vogue’s annual Met Ball, shot together for the cover of Dazed & Confused Japan, and emblematic of London’s new wave.

Presenting his “Sex, Lies & Volleyball” collection for this summer, last September, showcasing a radical collaboration with Levis 501, that encompassed a Selfridges front window during London Fashion Week (and just round the corner Browns Focus dedicated their Fashion Week windows to House of Holland), and store appearance there, one would never imagine that a couple of month’s later, a heavily pregnant M.I.A would appear alongside Jay Z and Kanye West to perform at The Grammy’s wearing the sheer net dress with [strategically placed] polka dot panels.
With a whole host of impressive sponsorship deals most recently with Sebastian Professional who supported his recent London show and after party (with a spontaneous performance by Kanye West), and Swarovski, he is also an in-demand DJ who has been flown to Chanel parties to perform. This summer, he starts blogging for Teen Vogue, and following the success of his Channel 4 TV series ‘Frock Me’ which he presented alongside Alexa Chung, his series of interviews with various fashion luminaries including Sir Paul Smith, will go live on Vogue TV later this summer.

Stephen Jones
Born in Cheshire, and schooled in Liverpool, Stephen Jones burst on to the London fashion scene during its explosion of street style in the late seventies. By day, he was a student at St Martins; after dark he was one of that era’s uncompromising style-blazers at the legendary Blitz nightclub – always exquisitely dressed, and always crowned with a striking hat of his own idiosyncratic design.

Contemporaries hungered for a little of his individuality. And, by 1980, Jones had opened his first millinery salon in the heart of London’s Covent Garden. Those premises soon became a place of pilgrimage and patronage, as everyone from rock stars to royalty, from Boy George to Lady Diana, identified Jones as the milliner who would help them make arresting headlines.

Jones made millinery seem modern and compelling. In materials that were often radical, and in designs that ranged from refined to whimsical, his exquisitely crafted, quixotic hats encapsulated the fashion mood of the moment.

Twenty-five years later, Jones’s era-defining edge continues to attract a celebrity clientele which currently includes Marilyn Manson, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Beyonce Knowles and Alison Goldfrapp.

Ever playful with scale, Jones created Kylie Minogue’s truly spectacular showgirl headdresses – while, for Dita Von Teese, the burlesque super-star, he recently fashioned the tiniest of tricornes. He has designed hats for the Rolling Stones – and for Rei Kawakubo’s recent Stones-inspired Comme des Garçons menswear collection.

But Kawakubo is only one name in the rollcall of fashion designers with whom Jones has collaborated. From Vivienne Westwood, Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler and Jean-Paul Gaultier throughout the eighties to his current work with John Galliano for Dior, Jones’s hats have been an integral component in some of the most memorable runway spectacles of the past quarter century.

Today, Jones’s retail boutique, design studio and workroom are all located in a charming Georgian townhouse close to the site of his very first millinery salon. In addition to his Model Millinery collection, he designs the widely-distributed Miss Jones and JonesBoy diffusion ranges – plus a JonesGirl accessories line exclusively for Japan.

Jones’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert museum (London), the Louvre (Paris), The Fashion Institute of Technology and the Brooklyn Museum (both, New York), the Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Australian National Gallery (Canberra). Now, as ever, at the forefront of fashion, his beguiling hats routinely grace the most celebrated magazine covers and enliven window displays of the world’s most stylish stores. From runways to race-courses, from pop-promos to royal garden parties, millinery by Stephen Jones adds the exclamation mark to every fashion statement.

Gavin Turk
Gavin Turk continually investigates what it means to be an artist and many of his works deal with issues of authorship, authenticity and originality.

Turk has made his own version of works by Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Marcel Broodthaers, Réné Magritte and Andy Warhol in works that both disguise the ‘real’ artist as well as reveal his horizon of influence. Concerned with the ‘myth’ of the artist and the ‘authorship’ of a work, Turk’s engagement with this modernist, avant-garde debate stretches back to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. In the early 1990s, Turk made a number of works based on his own signature that comment on the value that the artist’s name can confer onto a work. He has also made a number of photographic and sculptural self-portraits that often involve some degree of disguise such as his best-known sculpture ‘Pop’ (1993), a waxwork of Gavin Turk as Sid Vicious in the stance of Warhol’s Elvis Presley or ‘Che’ (1999) where he posed as the dead revolutionary Che Guevara. More recently, Turk has taken inspiration from the street, making sculptures of ordinary, everyday objects such as bin bags, sleeping bags or polystyrene coffee cups in bronze that is then painted to appear hyper-real. The works are wry and ironic, again underlining the way that an artist can transform an object’s value, and confer a canonical status to something that is literally ‘rubbish’ and usually overlooked.

Turk has also made large-scale installations, such as his work ‘The Golden Thread’ (2004), which was a huge mirrored labyrinth, referring obliquely to the anonymous architecture of corporations and retail outlets. The work is essentially ‘empty’, providing not an object for contemplation but a journey or tunnel for the viewer to be constantly presented with nothing but their own reflection.

Gavin Turk was born in Guildford in 1967 and lives and works in London. He has participated in several important group exhibitions such as Istanbul Biennial (1999), ‘Century City’, Tate Modern, London (2001), ‘Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop’, Tate Liverpool (2002) and ‘Coollustre’, Collection Lambert en Avignon (2003). Solo exhibitions include South London Gallery (1998), Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (2000), The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2002), Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (2006) and GEM Museum of Contemporary Arts In The Hague (2007), Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland (2008).

Martha Fiennes
Martha Fiennes is a filmmaker, writer and entrepreneur. Her debut feature film was an adaptation of Russia’s great literary masterpiece Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin’. Onegin (starring Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes) won Best Film at the Tokyo Film Festival and won Fiennes the London Critics Circle Award for Best Newcomer as well as being nominated for a BAFTA for best British Film in 1999. Her second feature was the highly original and contemporary UK-based Chromophobia (starring ensemble cast Penelope Cruz, Kristen Scott-Thomas, Damian Lewis, Ben Chaplin, Ralph Fiennes, Ian Holme…) – both written and directed by Fiennes – which closed 2005 Cannes Critic Week.

Fiennes has also directed commercial campaigns with top advertising agencies and large corporate clients, as well as groundbreaking music videos for artists including Al Green, XTC, Betty Boo, OMD, Boy George and more recently Beyonce.

Her current projects in development include the pioneering of a revolutionary new digital imagery platform, SLOimage™ as well as her next feature film an ambitious and sophisticated UK-thriller, Blown – starring Samuel L Jackson and Guy Pearce, Franka Potente and Jason Isaacs. Blown is a brooding, contemporary and intelligent portrait of the new ‘accountable’ MI5 and the pressures on its engagement with the global corporate psychology.

Danny Moynihan
Danny Moynihan went to the Slade School of Fine Art after which, together with Paul Kasmin, Jasper Morrison, he opened The Space Gallery. They showed mostly painters and photographers and the gallery lasted about two years. Tired of trying to sell art to a frigid English audience, Danny fled to New York and managed to find himself a position at the Robert Miller Gallery. During this time he was still painting and in the end it got the better of him and consequently he returned to London determined to make a go of it. A succession of shows followed in the late eighties and nineties.

Danny also started curating shows for galleries. In 1993, he went to live in New York again and by a strange set of circumstances wrote the Libretto for an opera called Agongo composed by Mark Springer and Sarah Shandy. It was performed in part as an installation by Damien Hirst at the Edinburgh Festival in 1994. Painting and curating went on until he picked up a pen and decided to write about the art world. This resulted in Boogie Woogie. Since then he has adapted the book for a film which will be released this summer. In 2004, Danny started Photo London – a photography fair at the Royal Academy. Another book called Bait is due to come out later in the year which is a compilation of erotic, ethnographic, ‘artistic’ and medical nude photography between 1850 and 1940 which he has collected over the years. Danny has written and reviewed but his proudest accomplishment is having started a highly successful scaffold company.

Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin RA is a contemporary conceptual artist and a painter. He is particularly noted for his influence over the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught.

Although born in Ireland, Michael Craig-Martin grew up and was educated in the USA, studying Fine Art at Yale University. He moved to Britain on completion of his studies in 1966.

In 1974, he exhibited the seminal piece An Oak Tree. The work consists of a glass of water standing on a shelf attached to the gallery wall next to which is a text using a semiotic argument to explain why it is in fact an oak tree. Nevertheless, on one occasion when it was barred by Australian Customs officials from entering the country as vegetation, he was forced to explain it was really a glass of water. The work was bought by the National Gallery of Australia in 1977; the Tate gallery has an artist’s copy.

Craig-Martin’s style of detached conceptualism, minimal construction by the artist and the use of readymade techniques inspired by Marcel Duchamp had a marked impression on his students, as did an educational structure based on multi-media, removing traditional departmental demarcations such as “painting”, “sculpture” and “time-based [film] media”. As a senior tutor at Goldsmiths’ College, he was a significant influence on the emerging YBA generation, including Damien Hirst. He was also helpful in promoting the Freeze show to established artworld figures.

Craig-Martin discussed the Freeze exhibit in an interview with Brian Sherwin. Craig-Martin stated, “I had always tried to help my students in any way I could, particularly in those first years after art school. I knew from personal experience how difficult it was – I never had things come easy. I did the same with Damien and Freeze. I encouraged people to go and see the work. I would never have done this if I hadn’t believed the show was of exceptional interest – why waste people’s time? It amuses me that so many people think what happened was calculated and cleverly manipulated whereas in fact it was a combination of youthful bravado, innocence, fortunate timing, good luck, and, of course, good work. It caught people’s imagination.”

Craig-Martin’s later works have used a stylised drawing technique often depicting everyday household objects and sometimes incorporating art references, such as objects known from their use in Dada artworks. His work can be compared to that of his earlier contemporary Patrick Caulfield and latterly with that of Julian Opie. There is no differentiation in treatment, which consists of black line drawings with lines of equal mechanical width and brightly coloured images, which have been compared to “nursery” colours. The work can be done on canvas with (acrylic) paint or with other methods, such as using black tape to make the lines. In the Intelligence show at Tate Britain he completed an entire room in this fashion.

Craig-Martin has been a trustee of the Tate Gallery and is a trustee of the National Art Collections Fund.

His first retrospective took place at in the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1989. In 2006, the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented “Michael Craig-Martin: Works 1964-2006” which included works from over 40 years of Craig-Martin’s career. The exhibition showed around 50 paintings, sculptures, wall drawings, neon works and text pieces by the artist, covering everying from his sculptures to digital works. One of his works called On the Table (1970) involved four metal buckets suspended on a table, exemplifying the influence of Minimalism and Conceptualism had on Craig-Martin. An Oak Tree (1973), consisting of an ordinary glass of water on an equally plain shelf, with a text by Craig-Martin that asserts the superiority of the artist’s intention over the object itself is now recognized as a turning point in the development of conceptual art; very different remarks from its original views which were surprise and sometimes scorn.

Michael Nyman
As one of Britain’s most innovative and celebrated composers, Michael Nyman’s work encompasses operas and string quartets, film soundtracks and orchestral concertos. Far more than merely a composer, he’s also a performer, conductor, bandleader, pianist, author, musicologist and now a photographer and film-maker. Although he’s far too modest to allow the description ‘Renaissance Man’, his restless creativity and multi-faceted art has made him one of the most fascinating and influential cultural icons of our times.

At this stage of a long and notable career, he might forgivably have been content to rest on his considerable laurels. Yet instead of looking back on a lifetime of achievement that ranges from his award-winning score for the film The Piano to the acclaimed opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, via a string of high-profile collaborations with everyone from Sir Harrison Birtwistle to Damon Albarn, he’s still looking forward – pushing the boundaries of his art with a diverse and prolific burst of creativity as energetic and challenging as any new and iconoclastic young kid on the block.

The year 2009 will see the production of a new opera, his music being used in a production by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, a new work commissioned in honour of Ennio Morricone’s 80th birthday and the first-ever exhibition of his photographs and video-works

Never one to sit around in an ivory tower, his diary bulges with a full international touring schedule with the Michael Nyman Band as well as a series of unique one-off performances with such diverse collaborators as the singer David MacAlmont, a Polish accordion trio and the innovative sound artist Carsten Nicolai.

Nyman first made his mark on the musical world in the late 1960s, when he invented the term ‘minimalism’ and, still in his mid-twenties, earned one of his earliest commissions, to write the libretto for Birtwistle’s 1969 opera Down By The Greenwood Side.

In 1976 he formed his own ensemble, the Campiello Band (now the Michael Nyman Band) and over three decades and more, the group has been the laboratory for much of his inventive and experimental compositional work.

For more than 30 years, he had also enjoyed a highly successful career as a film composer, the role in which – sometimes to his slightly rueful regret – he is probably best known by the general public.

His most notable scores number a dozen Peter Greenaway films, including such classics as The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; Neil Jordan’s The End Of The Affair; several Michael Winterbottom features including Wonderland and A Cock And Bull Story; the Hollywood blockbuster Gattaca – and, of course, his unforgettable music for Jane Campion’s 1993 film, The Piano, the soundtrack album of which has sold more than three million copies. He also co-wrote the score for the 1999 film Ravenous with his friend and sometime protégé, Damon Albarn. Most recently his music was used in the 2009 BAFTA award winning and Oscar nominated film, Man on Wire.

His reputation among highbrow critics is built upon an enviable body of work written for a wide variety of ensembles, including not only his own band, but also symphony orchestra, choir and string quartet. He has also written widely for the stage. His operas include The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (1986) and Facing Goya (2000) and he has provided ballet music for a number of the world’s most distinguished choreographers.

In 2008, he published the sumptuous photo-book Sublime. His first gallery exhibition, Videofile, in which his photos are presented alongside a series of short films, runs at the De la Warr Pavillion until March 2009.

Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears is a two-time Academy Award-nominated English film director.

In the mid-1980s, Frears came to international attention as an important director of British and American films. His first film was the 1972 Gumshoe. But it was his production of the Hanif Kureishi screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette for Channel 4 in 1985 that led to his notice as a capable film director. The production was released theatrically to great acclaim, and received a nomination for an Academy Award and two nominations for BAFTA Awards.

He next directed another successful British film, the Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears (1987), which was followed by a second film from a Hanif Kureishi screenplay, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. The following year he made his Hollywood debut with Dangerous Liaisons. The film was quite successful at the box office. It received numerous nominations for Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards, and Frear himself was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Direction.

He had another critical success with The Grifters (1990), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. His film Hero (1992), starring Dustin Hoffman, was a major box office disappointment. He was also nominated for a Razzie Award for his direction of Mary Reilly (1996).

He has since directed a number of successful films in both Britain and America, including The Hi-Lo Country (1998), High Fidelity (2000), Dirty Pretty Things (2003) and Mrs Henderson Presents starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. In recent years he has also occasionally returned to directing for television, perhaps most notably helming The Deal, a dramatised account of the alleged deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to decide which of them should become leader of the Labour Party in 1994, for Channel 4 in 2003.

His film, The Queen, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It achieved immense critical acclaim, box office success and awards. He himself received his second Academy Award nomination for his direction of the film and Dame Helen Mirren won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Frears’ latest project, Cheri, is an upcoming film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. It is an adaptation of the novel by French author Colette. The film premiered at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival.

Amanda Eliasch
Amanda Eliasch studied at The Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and then at the Black and White Photography school before embarking on her photographic career. Amanda has exhibited in several London based galleries including The Black and White Gallery, The Cork Street Gallery and the Proud Galleries, where her work was well received by the public and critics.

‘Her striking black and white photography, exposes our obsession with vanity, sex and the ideal female form. Preferring natural light sources to maximise her subjects’ features, she captures their serenity, humour and vitality’. The Evening Standard said “Her stunning, sexy photographs exude glamour and gusto… She’s at her best with her stylish confident images of nude models”.

Michael Comte, Bob Carlos Clarke and Charles Saatchi are among those who have praised her photographic style and she has been likened to Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim and Cartier-Bresson. Above all she is herself.

Amanda’s latest project demonstrates a new and exciting direction with the publication of her first book ‘British Artists at Work’.

The book commissioned by Franza Sozzani of Italian Vogue, captures four generations of artists from the established to the emerging. Amanda photographed 46 artists in their studios including Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Gavin Turk, Sam Taylor-Wood, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Marc Quinn, Anish Kapoor, Rachael Whiteread, Jenny Saville, Gilbert and George and Turner Prize winner for 2003 Grayson Perry. Amanda’s photographs are set alongside a personal diary of her experiences on each shoot.

AMOS
Amos went to art college in Liverpool and Manchester. After having been immersed in the music scene in the late ‘80s and acting in the early 90’s, she returned to art and painting and performances in galleries in 1999 with a performance titled ‘My Flesh My Canvas’ that led to many works in Europe and Asia. Using the body ‘as a blank canvas’ has been paramount to the Amos code in making work and performing, the most recent being ‘Atomic Forms and the Corruption of Flesh’ an exhibition and performance in London, February 2008. Amos completed a PhD -: Self(ish) Fusion Thinking and Practice (2004). Major works include 24 hour durational performances in The Opera Paese Gallery, Rome. The resulting painting went on sale in London for £1.3m , the price was purposefully provocative creating press stories and an ‘art scandal’ at the time. Asked how long the work had taken to produce, she replied ‘all my life, thirty-odd years ’.

Included in the vast body of her works are visual/sound installations and films, collaborating with sonic artists and composers. She is represented in Los Angeles by LEADAPRON Gallery and in London by Tenderpixel Gallery. Her influence on the performance art scene has influenced a number of protégés – using the naked female body in work and not referring to the victimization, sexual objectification or repression of women, but combining Constructivism and painterly concepts with her physical body and a raw powerful energy revolving around the connectivity of all things, sexual expression and the redemption of the self. Amos has had many exhibitions of her photographs and paintings that have been the result of a performance. She says ‘‘the paintings are only documents and a recording of an event, an action that happened. The paintings are not the work; the action, the performance the improvised and impulsive moment is the only work, everything else after that is a dead animal’’. Leon Max described her work as “cunningly bewildering cleverly bombastic art..”