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Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Dune”:

An Exhibition of a Film of a Book That Never Was

2 April – 16 May

Steven Claydon, Matthew Day Jackson and Vidya Gastaldon

with material by Moebius, H R Giger and Chris Foss

Curated by Tom Morton

An Exhibition of a Film of a Book That Never Was takes as its departure from the cult Chilean film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempted 1976 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune. This exhibition includes production drawings made by Moebius, H R Giger and Chris Foss alongside commissioned work made in response by three international contemporary artists: Steven Claydon, Matthew Day Jackson and Vidya Gastaldon.

Following the release of his mystical Western El Topo (1970) and Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky embarked on his Dune project, gathering around him a group of collaborators that included the French comics artist Moebius, the Swiss artist
H R Giger (who would later design the 1979 film Alien), the British science fiction artist Chris Foss, and the British band Pink Floyd, who would provide the soundtrack. Unable to secure the money from Hollywood to create the Dune of his imagination, Jodorowsky abandoned the film before a single frame was shot. All that survives of this project is Jodorowsky’s extensive notes and the production drawings of Moebius, Giger and Foss.

These reveal a potential future for science fiction movie-making that eschewed the conservative technology-based approach of American film-makers in favour of something closer to a metaphysical fever-dream. This was, though, a future that would never take place. In 1977, George Lucas’ Star Wars was released and the history of science fiction film-making, and even mainstream cinema, would never be the same again...

Dune’s themes of jihad, resource war and environmental degradation are especially pertinent to our current political moment, and the exhibition also seeks to explore the notion of adaptation and counterfactual histories of film. The exhibition brings together the original production drawings for Dune and Moebius’ storyboards for Jodorowsky’s script alongside new works by Steve Claydon, Matthew Day Jackson and Vidya Gastaldon developed in reaction to Jodorowsky’s notes on Dune - an extraordinary mixture of mystical pronouncement, philosophical speculation on the nature of authorship, cultural criticism and 70s film gossip.

This exhibition is a touring exhibition from The Drawing Room. The project is guest-curated by Tom Morton, Curator at the Hayward, London, Co-curator of The British Art Show 7
(2010 -11)and Contributing Editor, frieze magazine.

Press enquiries: contact Hannah Prothero, Marketing & Communications Manager, Plymouth Arts Centre, phone: 01752 276990, email: hannah@plymouthartscentre.org

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Image:Vidya Gastaldon, I must not fear, fear is the mindkiller... 2009. Courtesy Art:Concept, Paris.

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Image: Matthew Day Jackson, to infinity...2009. Courtesy the artist and Grimm Fine Art, Amsterdam.