Back             'Re-Imagining October' at Calvert22, curated by Isaac Julien and Mark Nash       Calvert22‘s third and current exhibition, 'Re-Imagining October' is curated by Mark Nash and Isaac Julien and features the work of several artists. The exhibition originates from two very distinct starting points: British director and artist, Derek Jarman‘s film, October, a work that both evokes the homophilic world of the Soviet military while alluding to the homosexuality of the groundbreaking Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, after whose seminal 1927 work October Jarman‘s film is named; and Abderrahmane Sissako‘s 1993 Octobre that explores the connotation of the signifier October in a different register. Made while the director was a film student in Moscow, the work addresses the break-up of an inter-racial relationship between an African student and his Russian girlfriend. The film emphasises how the characters have become alienated in and by their environment. Nash and Julien take these two films as 'Re-Imagining October'‘s starting point; in order to reflect on work that explores and/or is caught up in the historic legacy of the Soviet Union, socially, politically and creatively. As Russia and its fellow former Socialist states attempt to return to a market economy, so too the arts attempt to enter into dialogue with both contemporary Western post-modernism, as well as that of Soviet modernism. These tendencies pull in different directions, with different politics and aesthetics, yet no artist or filmmaker working in this region can afford to ignore them. All the works selected for 'Re-Imagining October' therefore participate in this to and fro of reference and denial, and the seemingly innocent video fragments are the result of an artistic action as significant and resonant of an avant-garde attitude as the most complex art cinema statement. 2 October - 13 December 2009 *Please note new extended dates 22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP Nearest Tube: Old St / Liverpool St http://www.calvert22.org