Nathaniel Mellors

Thanks to Sean’s overly excited report on Nathan Mellors’ exhibition in the ICA in London and after some video soul searching, the next logical step is to share the art on Grateful Grapefruit.

Born in Doncaster, England 1974, Nathaniel lives and works in London. He studied 1999–2001 at the Royal College of Art, London and 1996–1999 at Ruskin School, Oxford University. Mellors’ output includes installation, sculpture, film and video, music, performance, collage, painting, prints and critical writing.

The exhibition in ICA includes three films and an animatronic sculpture are part of an opus called Ourhouse, an absurdist soap opera-cum-drama focusing on the Maddox-Wilson family: Charles, the hippy-casualty patriarch, his wife Annalise, and his sons Truson and Faxon. Here is the first episode:

The exhibition publicity states that Monty Python is a “touchstone” for much of Mellors’s work but this comparison damns his project. Mellors’s films are beyond obscure and more than abominably smartarse. Watch them all on Vimeo.