Writer, filmmaker, architectural critic and Britain’s greatest living television essayist Jonathan Meades (b. 1947) is the focus of our summer Retrospective.
For nearly 30 years, Meades has interrogated art, architecture and the everyday to explore national identity and cultural phenomena from brutalism to dictators to caravanning. Through over 50 films for the BBC, he has developed an on-screen persona of a virtuoso and villainous polemicist, constituting a style of filmmaking that merges cultural criticism with performance art. In this retrospective, we look back through Meades’ career from his earliest programmes for the BBC to his most recent filmmaking and writing, a body of work that remains profound, funny and startlingly relevant.
The season includes screenings and events with partners the BFI, London Review Bookshop, Picturehouse Cinemas, Genesis Cinema, RIBA and The Horse Hospital. Curated by Matthew Harle and Gareth Evans with Jonathan Meades.
In association with the London Festival of Architecture.
Screening & Discussion
Meades + Artists
Wed 31 May
The Horse Hospital
Works Screened:
In Search of Bohemia: Artists’ Architecture (1991)
When the World was Modern: Big Tech of the 60s (1997)
Estate (2016)
Screening & Intro
Meades + Regeneration, with Introductions from Jonathan Meades and Owen Hatherley
Fri 2 Jun, 7pm
RIBA
Works Screened:
Get High: The Perilous Attractions of Vertigo (1994)
On the Brandwagon: The Regeneration Racket (2007)
Screening & In Conversation
Jonathan Meades in Conversation with Rachel Cooke
Sat 3 Jun, 6pm
BFI Southbank
Works Screened:
Belgium: Magritte was a Social Realist (1994)
tv-SSFBM: Surreal Film (2001)
Screenings & Introduction
Concrete & Victoria, with introduction from Jonathan Meades
Sun 4 Jun, 11.30am–6pm
£15.00 / £12.50 concs
Whitechapel Gallery
Works screened:
Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry Part I (2014)
Absentee Landlord (1997)
Heart Bypass: Birmingham (1998)
The Case of the Missing Architect (2007)
Victoria Died in 1901 and is Still Alive Today (2001)
In Conversation
Meades in Conversation with John Mitchinson
Mon 5 Jun, 7pm
London Review Bookshop
Screening
Meades + East
Fri 9 Jun, 7pm
London Review Bookshop
Works Screened:
The Joy of Essex (2013)
Double Dutch: The Fens (1997)
Screening, Introductions & Discussion
Meades + Dictators and Scotland, with introductions from Jonathan Meades, Chris Petit and Douglas Murphy
Sun 11 Jun, 11.30am–6pm
£15.00 / £12.50 concs
Whitechapel Gallery
Works Screened:
Joe-Building: The Stalin Heritage Trail (2006)
Jerry-Building: Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany (1994)
Aberdeen (2009)
The Isle of Rust (2009)
Footballs Coupons Towns (2009)
Screening
Meades + France, with an introduction from Gavin Haynes
Tue 13 Jun
Picturehouse Central
Works Screened:
Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia (2012)
A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries (2012)
Just a Few Debts France Owes to America (2012)
Screening
Meades + North
Wed 14 Jun
Picturehouse Central
Works Screened:
Flanders to Hamburg (2008)
The Hansa Cities (2008)
Screening & Introduction
Meades + West, with an introduction from Jonathan Meades
Thur 15 Jun, 7–9pm
£9.50 / £7.50 concs
Whitechapel Gallery
Works Screened:
Father to the Man: Architectural Autobiography (2007)
Travels with Pevsner: Worcestershire (1998)
Screening & Conversation
Meades + Brutalism, Jonathan Meades in conversation with Iain Sinclair
Tue 20 Jun, 6.30pm
Genesis Cinema c/o The Luxury Book Club
Works Screened:
Bunkers, Brutalism, Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry part II (2014)
Right is Wrong: The Utopian Avoidance of Right Angles (1991)
Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist, film-maker. His books include three works of fiction – Filthy English, Pompey and The Fowler Family Business – and several anthologies of which the most recently published is Museum Without Walls, which received 13 nominations as a book of the year in 2012. His most recent book, An Encyclopaedia of Myself (Fourth Estate), won Best Memoir in the Spear’s Book Awards 2014 and was shortlisted for the 2015 Pen Ackerley Prize.
He has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on predominantly topographical subjects such as shacks, garden cities, megastructures, buildings associated with vertigo, beer, pigs, and the architecture of Hitler and Stalin.
Matthew Harle is Research Fellow of the Barbican Centre & Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he is assembling, researching and curating the Barbican archive. Alongside writing and teaching, he regularly screens archive film, television and video and curates the Broadcasting the Arts season at BFI Southbank.
Gareth Evans is a writer, curator, presenter and the Film Curator of London’s Whitechapel Gallery.
