THE DECORATIVE POTENTIAL OF BLAZING FACTORIES Comes to The Coronet Theatre

The first film commission by The Coronet Theatre for the main stage, The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories, by long time collaborators Gary Chitty and Bruce McLean, will be shown 19 22 June. Running alongside, in The Print Room, will be an exhibition and sale of recent drawings and prints by McLean, including pictures and models from the film.

An ingenious blend of art and drama influenced by Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre, this humorous feature-length moving picture, 'starring 58 sheets of foam board' will be accompanied each night by different live action from Chitty and McLean, described by them as 'expanded cinema.'

This motion picture is far from being a conventional film. McLean describes it as 'a cardboard catastrophe' whose deliberately grandiose plot pokes gentle fun at the lavish tropes of the contemporary art world, as well as political aspirations gone mad.

Gary Chitty and Bruce McLean first met in the early 70s and co-founded Nice Style, the world's first Pose Band making 'action sculptures'. Despite an early appearance opening for the Kinks in '71, Nice Style were not a band in the traditional sense instead creating an experience which blended dance, art, fashion, performance and the absurd in equal measure.

The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories is story about art, ambition and a desire for infamy: a young woman, an artist, who wants to create the greatest landscape painting of all time (and in the process burns down a factory) and a politician who wants to create a great world summit between North and South. The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories is a filmic reinvention of tradition, artistic anguish and industrial, when what started as a quest for artistic inspiration turns into a disaster of biblical proportions...

Will the politician succumb to temptation and ruin his ambition? Will the artist sell her painting for $100 million, save the factory workers and create a new artistic legacy? This and many more questions will be asked in the smoked-filled rooms of the Decorative Potential film, in a story which journeys to the very heart of art and politics.

The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories is part of a special retrospective season celebrating more than 5 decades of work by Bruce McLean - one of the most important figures in British contemporary art. The season includes a 2-part retrospective at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London and the publication of a new book 'Bruce McLean, Five Decades of Sculpture'.

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