HAMPSHIRE, UK.- ArtSway is delighted to announce The Time Surgeon, a new film-based installation from Nathaniel Mellors, co-commissioned with the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon 2007. This new work was created while Nathaniel Mellors was artist in residence at ArtSway this year, and much of the film was shot on location in the New Forest. Nathaniel Mellors’ ArtSway residency is a partnership with the Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

The Time Surgeon is an absurdist film, partly inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) and Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), in which the central character’s verbal descriptions of torture, in combination with the fast-forward and rewind buttons on his Sony portable, are enough to send his tape-bound ‘Victim’ shuttling forwards and backwards in time. ‘Victim’ is steered through significant historical events, visiting 1960s New York and Renaissance France as well as Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha – arriving inside the body of Christ by mistake, causing the abortion of Christ’s conjoined ‘sensible twin’, before finally meeting GOD – who requests the end of the art-work. Nathaniel Mellors is known for his ad-hoc sculpture, psychedelic theatre and satirical films which target the question of who controls language.

Nathaniel Mellors (born Doncaster, 1974) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2001 and lives and works in London and Amsterdam. Selected solo exhibitions include Hateball at Alison Jacques Gallery (2005) and Profondo Viola, Matt’s Gallery (2004). He is currently resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam and will exhibit Hateball in The Present Order is the Disorder of the Future at De Hallen Haarlem this Autumn. Nathaniel Mellors was selected for a residency at ArtSway in partnership with the Arts Institute at Bournemouth’s text + work programme. text + work is publishing a full-colour publication to accompany the exhibition, entitled ‘B.OK’, and including new critical texts by Jennifer Higgie, David Evans and Martin Herbert.

Nathaniel Mellors is represented by Alison Jacques Gallery, London and Matt’s Gallery, London.