Gerry Fox

BAFTA award winning filmmaker Gerry Fox brings paintings of the past to life through his video works. His latest work Sunset at Fingal's Cave, After Turner (2015) reinvents Turner’s famous painting, Staffa, Fingal’s Cave as he captures a boat hauntingly disappearing along the horizon by the legendary cave in the Hebrides.

In his series Nudes Moving (2012), Fox restages seductive works by Schiele and Rodin. Using high speed film, he creates mesmerisingly slow fluid movements effused with sensuality as the figures seamlessly move in and out of moments of shear eroticism and tenderness. Each work is digitally manipulated using cutting edge technology to replicate the soft strokes, pencil edges and painterliness faithfully miming the originals. His works are charged with a palpable sense of intimacy and intensity, hypnotising with each alluring movement.

In his Venetian Impressions series (2010) he recreated paintings by artists including Turner, Sargent, Manet, Monet and Renior. These works appear to be oil paintings on canvas at first glance but are in fact slow-motion “impressionist” representations of Venice, modern-day video evocations of the painted past.

He is also known for his large-scale, site-specific film installation works which have received wide public attention and critical acclaim. He was the first artist in residence at Zabludowicz Collection, London from 2007-2008 which resulted in the exhibition, Living London. His six-screen immersive work, Favela Descending was exhibited in Shoreditch as part of the Concrete and Glass Festival in 2008. Venice in Venice, a multi-screen film installation about the city in all its guises, made over five years, was displayed at the Palazzo dona della Rose during the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Fox was born in South Africa in 1964 and lives and works in London. Gerry Fox has won major awards (including the BAFTA, The Royal Television Society Best Arts Film, the Grierson Best Arts Documentary, the Prix Italia and The Festival of Films on Art in Montreal Grand Prize) for his innovative films about artists, including Gilbert and George, Robert Frank, Claes Oldenburg, Marc Quinn, Gerhard Richter and Bill Viola. A retrospective of Gerry Fox’s works were featured in Cinematic Tableaux at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal, Canada (2013).

Fox’s video works Sunset at Fingal’s Cave, after Turner (2015/17) and After Turner (2010) were included in Legacies: JMW Turner and contemporary art practice (2017/18) at The New Art Gallery Walsall that also featured work by Susan Hillier, Idris Khan and Cornelia Parker.