Derek Jarman | Reliquary

[Derek Jarman]

Reliquary

Dungeness, UK: 1996

18.5 x 13 cm.

Edition of 200 numbered copies

Filmmaker and activist Derek Jarman died at the age of 52 of AIDs related illnesses, in 1994, so this collection must be a posthumous work assembled by his estate. 

Reliquary is an archival box that houses a 15.5 cm. section of the Jarman's final film Blue, a fragment from the "Sainting robe", a photograph of Jarman by Howard Sooley, sixteen colour postcards, a packet of poppy seeds from Jarman's garden, a printed poem, a "Dungeness" stone charm, and more. 

The work is listed as being assembled by hand at Prospect Cottage, England, the Victorian fisherman's hut that the director purchased in 1987, and which is now operated as an historical site with Creative Folkestone acting the custodians of the property.

Responses To Derek Jarman's Blue [1993]

[Various Artists]

Responses To Derek Jarman's Blue [1993]

London, UK: Pilot Press, 2022

[unpaginated], 20 x 15 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

I remember reading about Derek Jarman's final film Blue at the time of its release, but if it played in Toronto it came and went quickly, unbeknownst to me. I had seen Edward II in cinemas* and I was a fan of the videos he made for the Smiths, but mostly it was the idea of an all-blue screen for 79 minutes that appealed to me. 

The same way I enjoy camera-less photography, I'm a fan of cinema-less cinema. Works like Tony Conrad's Yellow Movie, for example, or Yoko Ono's film scripts, Jackson Mac Low's Tree Movie, Louise Lawler's A Movie Will Be Shown Without The Picture, etc. etc. 

A few years later a friend who worked at the CFI sent me a bootleg on VHS, but in the meantime I settled for the soundtrack on CD, which more or less provided the bulk of the film, if you stared at its blue cover while listening. 

I suspect more people have experienced the work this way than in cinemas, and I'm just now learning that BBC radio broadcast Blue as an audio piece, and distributed postcards with International Klein Blue, to also approximate the experience of the film. 

The work has become a classic crossover from Arthouse cinema to Artist's Cinema, sitting comfortably alongside structuralist filmmaking like Michael Snow's Wavelength and durational works like Andy Warhol's Sleep or Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho. But Blue is also deeply moving as a portrait of a man living with, and eventually dying from AIDs. 

Jarman publicly declared himself HIV positive in 1987, and referred to a forthcoming response within his practice. “I left it as long as possible, because making a film about illness is jolly difficult,” he later remarked. He began to go blind shortly afterwards, seeing only a hazy dark blue, and would succumb to the illness only a few months after the film's premiere. 

Responses to Derek Jarman’s Blue is the third publication in a series of anthologies from Pilot Press seeking contemporary responses to works of art made during the AIDS crisis.

Contributors include Roelof Bakker, Jared Davis, Becca Albee, Linda Kemp, Ashleigh A. Allen, David Nash, Sam Moore, Anton Stuebner, Gonçalo Lamas, Olivia Laing, Nate Lippens, Jason Lipeles, JP Seabright, Andrew Cummings, Sig Olson, Maria Sledmere, Cleo Henry, Jessie McClaughlin, Lars Meijer, Scott Treleaven, Declan Wiffen, Caitlin Merrett King, Harry Agius, António Manso Preto, Adriana Lazarova, Brooke Palmieri, D Mortimer, Mary Manning and Aaron James Murphy. 

*I mostly remember that it includes a joke borrowed from Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, where the camera pans away from the action to reveals that the soundtrack (in this case an Annie Lennox song) is in fact diegetic. 

Derek Jarman's Home and Garden

“The word unique is overused, but this really is a unique environment, it’s a unique building,” said artist Jeremy Deller, speaking of filmmaker Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage. “Within it you can see his thought processes, you can see his work and it is all in such incredible condition . . . He deserves to have this kept as it was.”

Deller and fellow artists Tacita Dean and Wolfgang Tillmans have produced works available as incentives for the fundraising drive to help preserve the home and famous garden in Dungeness, a hamlet on the coast of Kent, England.

The National Heritage Memorial Fund has pledged $981,000 and there's another $654,000 from the Art Fund, and $327,000 from the Linbury Trust. This figure must be doubled to provide for the cottage’s long-term care, so that residencies and tours of the property can still take place.

Tillmans and Dean both provided prints and Deller produced a button based and sticker series, which are available for a donation of £25. Dean said Jarman was an artist who touched many, “whether we’re stone collectors or gardeners or gay activists or just activists, or film-makers or painters … he was remarkable.”

"Paradise haunts gardens, and some gardens are paradises. Mine is one of them,” said Jarman, who purchased the home in 1986. Following his death eight years later, it was maintained by his partner Keith Collins until his passing in 2018. The garden was made by arranging flotsam washed up nearby, interspersed with endemic salt-loving beach plants, both set against the bright shingle. Published posthumously, Derek Jarman's Garden features writing by the artist and photographs by Howard Sooley. It's available from Amazon, here.

“First and foremost, the cottage was always a living thing, a practical toolbox for his work,” said Swinton (pictured above) at the launch of the fundraising campaign. Jarman had given the actress her first role, in his acclaimed 1986 film based on the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The film also provided the debut for actor Sean Bean.

Jarman's other films include Edward II, The Garden, Jubilee, and Wittgenstein. His final film, Blue, was produced after he was blinded from AIDs related complications. The seventy-nine minute film features a saturated blue still as it's only visual.

Jarman also produced music videos for Bryan Ferry, Marianne Faithful, Throbbing Gristle, Suede, The Pet Shop Boys and Patti Smith. His short film The Queen Is Dead, was later edited to provide The Smiths with videos for their songs "Panic", "Ask", "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" and the title track.

The fundraising drive will continue another 67 days. Pledge here:

https://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/prospect-cottage

John Smith awarded Jarman prize

John Smith (b. 1952, Walthamstow, England) has been announced as this year's winner of the The Jarman Award, an annual prize named for British filmmaker Derek Jarman. Jarman's output includes Caravaggio, Edward II, Wittgenstein, Blue and a few music videos for the Smiths. Blue, from 1993, was released a few months before the filmmaker died of AIDS related complications. He was partially blind when producing the 79 minute film, whose only image is a rich saturated blue.

The Jarman Award recognizes "individual artist film-makers whose risk-taking work resists boundaries and conventional definition - work that encompasses innovation, excellence and vision."

The winner receives a £10,000 cash prize, and a broadcast commission to produce a series of filmworks for Channel 4.

Check out Smith's brilliant 1976 short The Girl Chewing Gum on Youtube, here. It's available on DVD as part of a compilation of British shorts, here.