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DOUG FISHBONE
(b. 1969 in New York, USA. Lives and works in London.)
Doug Fishbone, Described as a “stand-up conceptual artist”, Doug Fishbone’s work is heavily influenced by the rhythms of stand-up comedy. Fishbone examines some of the more problematic aspects of contemporary life in an amusing and disarming way, using satire and humor in his films, performances and installations to critically examine consumer culture, mass media, and the relativity of perception and context. In his video and performance practice, he uses images found online to illustrate and undermine his own confrontational monologues on contemporary media and its corollary, the underground and avant-garde. Fishbone’s conceptual practice is wide-ranging, using many different forms of popular culture in unexpected ways. He earned a BA from Amherst College in the US in 1991, and MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London in 2003, and was awarded the Beck’s Futures Prize for Student Film and Video in 2004. Fishbone teaches and performs at major international and UK venues, including: the Hayward Gallery, ICA London, the Southbank Centre, Hauser and Wirth Somerset, and the Royal Academy. Fishbone is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Yinka Shonibare Foundation, an organization which fosters international cultural exchange.
Selected solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2010-11), Rokeby, London (2010-11, and 2009), Gimpel Fils, London (2006) and 30,000 Bananas in Trafalgar Square (2004). Selected group exhibitions include Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain (2010), Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2008); Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery (2008), London; British Art Show 6, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester (2006). Fishbone’s film project Elmina (2010) was premiered at Tate Britain in 2010, and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. Other notable projects include: the Mayor of London’s Thames Festival, London, UK (2013, 2014), and the Look Again Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland (2016). He curated Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and realised his solo project Made in China at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2015). Artificial Intelligence was commissioned by Werkleitz Festival, Halle, Germany (2018); and he showed a specially commissioned video The Jewish Question in the exhibition Jews, Money, Myth at the Jewish Museum, London (2019).
COMMUNISM
2008, Video Performance, 13 min 53 sec
A documentation of a performance lecture, Communism uses found and open source images to illustrate Fishbone’s essays on contemporary culture. Part stand-up performance, the work is in ongoing production, with MOMENTUM and Fishbone in collaboration on a future live performance. It was donated following its exhibiting in MONETUM’s inaugural benefit show in Berlin.
Elmina
2010, Feature Film made in collaboration with Revele Films, Accra, Ghana
Doug Fishbone has produced a feature-length action film, Elmina, that connects two vastly different audiences of the Western art world and the African home video market. Filmed in Ghana with major Ghanaian celebrities, the movie’s only artistic intervention is the insertion of Fishbone, a white American artist, as the lead role in a completely African production. The work fully adopts Ghanaian film making conventions, taking advantage of the shared language used and the low cost structure of the Ghanaian home video industry. In this project Fishbone continues to examine the complex relationship between perception and reality and the politics of representation while simultaneously asking wider questions about race, globalization and notions of a shared visual language. Elmina was premiered at Tate Britain in 2010, and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. The film was voted #35 on Artinfo’s list of the 100 most iconic artworks of the last 5 years.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Elmina is a full-length feature filmed entirely on location in Ghana, in which I play a local Ghanaian farmer fighting corruption and the exploitation of the community by a Chinese multinational corporation. Written and produced by one of Ghana’s leading production companies, with a cast of well-known Ghanaian and Nigerian actors, it is a whopping melodrama full of witchcraft, murder, greed and intrigue. The film aims to bring together two groups and cultural economies that might normally have little overlap – the Western art world, and the West African popular film industry. What allows it to cross over between the two worlds is my unexplained and totally inappropriate presence in the lead role of a domestically produced African feature – a white Jewish man from New York playing a role that would normally be played by a black West African actor. No reference is ever made to this oddity of casting, which in a quietly radical way completely overturns conventions of race and representation in film, and offers a new perspective on globalization, neo-colonialism, Eastern influence in Africa, and the relativity of audience engagement.