Cars

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

This video captures a performance in which 40 cars arrived and parked in alternate bays of a car park near Redruth. Participants tuned their radios to a unique temporary FM radio station (radio Nowhere) to hear a classic track by Luke Vibert (Lovely, under his alias Wagon Christ). The cars (each one like a tiny nightclub) followed directions to park in a simple choreographed sequence. Cars was filmed for the project All Going Nowhere Together, commissioned for Groundwork, and presented at a LUX Side by Side screening, as part of a season of exhibitions and events by international artists in Cornwall in 2018. 

The work has personal resonance for Naomi Frears, as a larger scale re-enactment of a work she participated in 1999 at the invitation of two visiting German artists. Frears’s father had passed away six weeks prior to the event and the song playing in the car was the same that she chose for Cars, in collaboration with the song’s writer Luke Vibert. She shares:

With his collaboration I was able to let a much larger number of people experience the unexpected glee of all parking together while listening to his music in a confined space.

Naomi Frears is a visual artist based in St Ives who works across painting, printmaking, film and video. She graduated from Sunderland College of Art in 1986 and was awarded the Printmaking Prize, leading printmaking courses at Falmouth Art Gallery (2007–17) and sessions at Tate St Ives (1993–2016). Her work has been exhibited and screened widely in the UK including at Newlyn Art Gallery (2013, 2014/15, 2017, 2018); Tate St Ives (2016); Bold Tendencies, London (2019); Exeter Phoenix and Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (2021). In 2020, she was awarded a painting commission by Hospital Rooms for the Bethlem Royal Hospital, London. Her work appears regularly on the cover of the 'London Review of Books' and was awarded 'Guardian Artist of the Month' in 2004.

Places

Subjects

van, car, car park

Materials & Techniques

digital video, video, QuickTime file format

Artist

Naomi Frears (1963 - )

Title

Cars

Edition

One of an edition of 5

Date

2020

Medium

Single Channel HD Video (master)

Dimensions

3 minutes 29 seconds

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 18 March 2021

GAC number

18977