Marcus Coates in front of a swirling green abstract painting wearing a red t-shirt and blue latex gloves

Portrait

Darren Banks, Palace Band-Wagon : Mobile Cinema, 2010

Palace Band-Wagon  refers both to Darren Banks' interest in the decline of VHS and to the Ghanian "mobile cinemas" of the 1980's where local artists were commissioned to make promotional posters for the films without necessarily having seen them beforehand. Transforming a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado into a mobile cinema, Palace Band-Wagon presents a continuous show-reel of Banks' archive of Palace Pictures VHS. Get on the Band-Wagon: Darren Banks’ mobile cinema by Caryn ColemanParked in the Cour Carrée entrance of FIAC 2010, Darren Banks’ (UK) temporary horror cinema Palace Band-Wagon brings heyday of the videocassette back to life. This is the ‘mobile cinema’ version of The Palace Collection, an evolving installation that negotiates collective horror history, effects of new technology, modes of distribution, and ideas on the collection. Housed in a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado that comes equipped with a television and a VCR, the public can choose continuous screenings of horror video classics such as Evil Dead, Brain Damage, and The Hills Have Eyes from Bank’s personal collection. This video collection consists of films distributed by Britain’s infamous Palace Pictures in the 1980s and have been tirelessly procured by Banks from Ebay, boot fairs, and charity shops.Darren Banks has given the overwhelming history of horror film a more approachable feel by focusing solely on Palace Pictures and their subsidiary companies of horror video (Palace also worked in comedy, thrillers, action, and music videos). Infamously, the Palace Picture Distribution and Production Company was a seminal distributor for cult cinema and international art films established by Stephen Woolley & Nik Powell in London (circa 1982). As part of the part of the decade’s legendary VHS and Betamax market boom, the innovative marketing strategies and schrewdness in securing film rights for Palace Video continue Palace Pictures’ legacy long after they declared bankruptcy in 1992. With The Palace Collection Banks re-ignites the personal power of the audience and the fetishization of cult cinema. In the 1980s, videocassettes facilitated film’s literal movement out of the cinema and into private realms, bringing movies to the people. The invention of the VCR allowed for personal home viewing that ignited a functional shift in the industry and sparked debates, particularly in the United Kingdom, about censorship. Simultaneously in Ghana (West Africa), a mobile cinema project brought impromptu screenings to isolated communities. Running TVs and VCRs on power generators the movies were mostly B-movie or horror movies like Cujo, Evil Dead, and Eaten Alive. The accompanying hand-painted promotional posters were often commissioned without the artist seeing the film but fostered a creative interpretation often exceeding the film’s content. Inspired by this, Banks is hosting a poster-painting workshop at FIAC where viewers can create artworks based on the selected films and add to the video archive.Palace Pictures’ downfall symbolizes the slow erasure of VHS and the perceived decline of the horror movie through excessive use of CGI and advanced technology. Treating his Palace videos as ephemera, Banks challenges the preciousness of the collection by placing it on public display as a useable resource. By provoking the audience to use outdated materials and to be selective in doing so, Darren Banks positions The Palace Collection and now Palace Band-Wagon as a readymade gesture urging the audience to remember the ‘just forgotten’ and the ‘recently redundant’.

Palace Band-Wagon : Mobile Cinema

This large-scale sculpture acts as a pivotal point in Bank's on-going sculptural collages and investigates superstitions residing in popular culture and domestic banality. This work puts forward the artist as a conductor, a soothsayer or alchemist, channeling and animating these underlying anomalies and malignant ghosts within our accumulative culture."In the exhibition's centre-piece Where Everything Is, an imposing mutant, moaning body is conjured from the synthesis of the quotidian and the Hallucinogenic. Banks is a skilled sculptural surgeon, expertly conjoining the most maligned pieces pieces of British domestic furniture (a wooden tv tray, a bottle green upholstered chair) with iconic signs of 1970's middle class respectability (a paper lampshade, cheese plant)with a barrage of looped video clips (Eyes without a face, Italian horror, porn and He-Man's nemesis Skeletor)......"John Beagles, MAP, issue 21, spring 2010.'Where Everything Is' is a homage to Otto Dix's painting of the 7 deadly sins which Banks saw as a student at Pompidou Centre and was struck by its sculptural potential as much as its challenging content. In Banks' version there is a TV for each of the 7 sins. Sloth is illustrated by an excerpt from the 80's cartoon "He Man" portraying his arch nemesis Skeletor, Greed show's a lady drowning in gold from "The Devil's Nightmare", Anger is scenes taken from the "Abominable Snowman", Gluttony repeats a Pie eating scene from"Stand By Me", Lust gives us an endless orgasm from Linda Lovelace in 'Deep Throat', Pride show us a woman without a face after an accident from "Eyes without a face", and Envy uses a 'jealous mother in law' scene from "Onibaba" by Akira Kurosawa. An 8th TV show's us a scene from Cronebergs "Scanners" which asks "What happens after your head explodes?" Following the 'explosion' the TV cuts into a montage from "Bye Bye Birdie" in which Ann-Margret sings to us backed by various images of 'space' taken from Bank's wide ranging Sci-Fi collection. Nestled within the sculpture is a projector which beams a clip entitled  'with all the will in the world' from "Good Will Hunting" of a painting in a therapy room.room

Where Everything Is

Darren Banks, Found Installation 1.14.33 - 1.14.37, 2009

Using film "Trick or Treat" from The Palace Collection a scene of a dance floor is claimed as a found installation by Banks. This work is an example of the significant role of video in the artist's practice to spur ideas for sculpture. His rudimentary use of post-production effects are as abrasive as his crude sculptural forms. In this cryptic weird and sedate film Banks has encapsulated ambivalence through an isolated fickle, yet sublime moment enhanced by the ephemeral quality of VHS.The four seconds of the film has been elongated then has been overlaid with a source of clips from "youtube" - adverts for pyrotechnic equipment shops - smoke machines, etc. These have been overlaid on top of the clip.Ideally shown in quiet areas of a space - this piece was first shown in Auto Italia, London in the redundant by-space of the entrance corridor. This context references the surreal quality of moments that can exist in brief interchanging time-periods when moving between circumstances, especially in social situations.

FIAC - Paris
21 - 24 October 2010

Marcus Coates | Matt Stokes

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Marcus Coates

Matt Stokes

London

Newcastle

FIAC - Paris