2009 Richard Wilson on Kino
In this film, the Royal Academician Richard Wilson discusses his role as a member of the Hanging Committee at the 2009 Summer Exhibition, the theme of which was “Making Space”. That year, he took charge of Gallery X, a rather difficult room to hang because of its limited natural light and role as the exit from a busy show. Wilson decided to call the room “KINO” (the word for cinema in Russian, German, Polish, Norwegian, and South Slavic languages) and transform the gallery into a cinema space to exhibit moving image works. This was the first time at the Summer Exhibition that there had been a concentrated focus on this kind of contemporary practice.
Wilson discusses how, as a sculptor, he conceptualised the space and created a cinema, reconstructing his design process with a cardboard model of Gallery X, which is now stored in the Royal Academy’s Archive. He describes how he invited artists to participate in an unconventional project to dedicate a large portion of the Summer exhibition to film. At that time, the Academy did not have among its members any prominent film-makers or moving image artists. Since 2009, this situation has changed dramatically, and artists who regularly work with film, such as Tacita Dean, Gillian Wearing, and Isaac Julien, have been elected to the membership of the Academy.
Jonathan Law, Richard Wilson on “Kino”, 2018, film. Courtesy of Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Creative Commons CC BY-NC International 4.0).
Thematic categories: artists’ films, cinematic exhibits, curation of exhibition and displays, Gallery X, innovation in Exhibition, invited artists, KINO display, models - for exhibition development, modernisation of Summer Exhibition, Selection and Hanging Committee, cinematic exhibits, invited artists, models - for exhibition development, Selection and Hanging Committee, filmmakers, moving image art