Marion de Cannière Gallery presents the international premiere of The Eccentric Banquet, a new film work and installation by UK artists Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, internationally renowned for their large-scale participatory events and exhibitions that invite audiences to imagine better worlds.
Walker & Bromwich’s dual practice seeks to explore the space between ‘what exists and what is possible’, resulting in socially engaged artworks that offer an idiosyncratic approach to the complexities of global issues, concerns with social engagement, participation and instigating positive social, ecological and political change.
The Eccentric Banquet was initially staged as a live event commissioned by Lincoln Art Program as part of the 2011 programme; The Trivia of Eccentric England.
Bringing together a diverse range of individuals, each with an eccentric story to tell, Walker & Bromwich hosted a banquet inspired by Victorian explorer and freethinker Charles Waterton that celebrated the attributes of eccentricity, and explored the notion that eccentric behaviour can enable significant conceptual leaps and promote changes to the way we think and operate as a society.
This latest film work, lifted from documentation of The Eccentric Banquet, employs Walker & Bromwich’s distinctive approach to exploring some of life’s more complex issues with humour and dexterity. As the narrative of the film unfolds, what emerges from this seemingly light-hearted participatory event is something darker and multi-layered that poignantly touches on pressing sociopolitical issues underpinning a complex social structure in the UK and an insidious shift in power structures that has wider global connotations.
