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14 July 2009
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Ben Lewis at the Venice Biennale
  ART SAFARI
RELATIONAL ART: IS IT AN ISM?

Thursday 8 July 2004 midnight-12.30am
 
 

Award-winning writer and director Ben Lewis, a self-confessed “art geek”, takes an off-beat tour around the fringes of contemporary art.

While all eyes in Nineties Britain focussed on our own Young British Artists, a different global art movement was evolving. The leading French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, described it as 'Relational Art'. Armed with Bourriaud's book Relational Aesthetics, Ben goes in search of what he hopes might be a new 'ism'.

But trouble lies ahead: many of the artists whose reputations were advanced by Bourriaud's exhibitions and writings, refuse to be interviewed, deny they are relational, or once interviewed, try to ban Art Safari from showing their work.

 
 
INTERVIEW
Ben Lewis
"There were many surprises in this film"
Director and presenter Ben Lewis
QUIZ
Test your knowledge of artists and isms
  Betsy

 NEXT WEEK
Maurizio Cattelan, the court jester of the art world.

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Details of Ben Lewis' film on Ceaucescu which won the Grierson Award 2002 for Best Historical Documentary

 



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