Over the past two decades, artists’ film has transitioned from the fringes of the art world into a central and celebrated medium, with increasing visibility in gallery and museum exhibitions globally. Film and Video Umbrella (FVU), where Keith Whittle worked from 1993 to 2005, has played a pioneering role in this shift. Since the mid-1990s, FVU has been at the forefront of commissioning and touring artists’ moving image works, many of which have gone on to receive international acclaim. Several artists commissioned by FVU have been shortlisted for, or won, the UK’s prestigious Turner Prize — notably Mark Leckey and Elizabeth Price, who received the award for film-based works in 2008 and 2013, respectively.
During his time at FVU, Whittle was initially involved in touring programmes that brought seminal works by internationally acclaimed artists such as Vito Acconci, Marina Abramović & Ulay, Gary Hill, and Bill Viola to wider audiences. Simultaneously, he championed a new generation of emerging artists experimenting with moving image, including Cheryl Donegan, Douglas Gordon, Gillian Wearing, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Vanessa Beecroft — many of whom would later become key figures in the Young British Artists (YBA) movement.
As his role evolved, Whittle played a central part in commissioning of national touring exhibitions of UK-based artists working in moving image. These exhibitions, produced by FVU in partnership with major galleries and cultural institutions, provided vital platforms for artists pushing the boundaries of film as an artistic medium. Highlights from this period include Cinerama by Turner Prize nominee Isaac Julien, Parade by Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey, A Free and Anonymous Monument by Jane and Louise Wilson, Looking for Alfred by renowned Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez (which explores the enduring legacy of Alfred Hitchcock), and Tomorrow World, Yesterday’s Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated) by Abigail Lane.
Whittle’s passion for artists’ film continues in his more recent curatorial work, which has included exhibitions featuring influential figures such as Derek Jarman, Sutapa Biswas, John Akomfrah, and Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, among others — reflecting an ongoing commitment to championing innovative voices in the field of moving image art.
Sir Isaac Julien
Vagabondia
Central to the evolving narrative of artists’ moving image is the work of Sir Isaac Julien CBE RA (b.1960, London), whose practice merges poetic visual storytelling with critical explorations of identity, history, and place. His contributions have been pivotal in reshaping the status of film within contemporary art, exemplified by works like Vagabondia and The Long Road to Mazatlan, both produced in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Javier de Frutos.
Vagabondia was originally commissioned for the exhibition Retrace Your Steps: Remember Tomorrow, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Cerith Wyn Evans at London’s Sir John Soane’s Museum. Set within the atmospheric spaces of the museum, the film explores notions of presence, absence, and the ghosts of history, using the figure of the wandering dancer to animate and disrupt the institution’s colonial and architectural legacy.
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Following its first staging, Vagabondia was later presented in Cinerama, a major exhibition that also featured The Long Road to Mazatlan — a three-screen installation nominated for the Turner Prize in 2000. Together, these works highlight Julien’s rich use of choreography, cinematic language, and layered sound design to interrogate themes of desire, diaspora, and cultural memory.
Vagabondia was commissioned and produced by Film and Video Umbrella as part of the Cinerama project, developed in partnership with Cornerhouse and funded by the National Touring Programme of Arts Council England. The project also received support from the British Council and Dance Umbrella. Special thanks to the London Film and Video Development Agency, Victoria Miro Gallery, and Rosa de la Cruz. The Long Road to Mazatlan was commissioned by Artpace (Texas) and Grand Arts (Kansas City), with additional support from London Arts Board and Arts Council England.
Johan Grimonprez
Looking for Alfred
Johan Grimonprez has garnered international recognition for his genre-defying films that explore media, memory, and the politics of representation. His work has been exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (California), Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich), and Tate Modern (London).
Grimonprez first rose to prominence with his critically acclaimed film essay dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which debuted at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany in 1997. The film eerily anticipated the events of 9/11 through its unsettling examination of media narratives and airplane hijackings. Since then, Grimonprez’s films have been featured in major international film festivals, including New York, Edinburgh, Telluride, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Berlin.
In 2016, his feature-length documentary Shadow World — a penetrating exposé of the global arms trade — received the Best Documentary Feature award at both the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland) and the 61st Valladolid International Film Festival (Spain).
Looking for Alfred, Grimonprez’s surreal meditation on identity, doubles, and cinematic memory, continues his exploration of film history and its cultural resonances. The work centre’s on the figure of Alfred Hitchcock, employing lookalikes and fragmented narratives to examine how authorship and mythology intertwine in visual culture.
With the aid of Hitchcock impersonators, Looking for Alfred weaves an unexpected narrative from Hitch’s fifty-year trail of cameo appearances in his own films. Shot amongst the atmospheric interiors of the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and making the most of the distinctive architecture of this unique location, Grimonprez’s cinematic twists and turns echo the trademark manner of the Master of Suspense while at the same time radiating a quiet and beguiling surrealism reminiscent of that other great modernist maestro, René Magritte. Alongside the film itself, in which ‘Hitch’ is pursued by a number of shadowy doppelgängers, the project consists of a multiplicity of elements, including storyboard drawings and casting photographs, plus behind-the-scenes footage of screen tests in New York, London and Los Angeles that documents Grimonprez’s search for the perfect Hitchcock look-alike.
The film was co-produced by Film and Video Umbrella and Zapomatik, in association with Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), The Photographers’ Gallery (London), and Anna Sanders Films (Paris). Looking for Alfred is made possible through the support of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund and Arts Council England. Additional contributions were provided by Deitch Projects, Riksutstillinger – The National Touring Exhibitions (Norway), Yvon Lambert Gallery, Media Space Inc., Victoria, and Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg).
Abigail Lane
Tomorrow World, Yesterday’s Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated)
Abigail Lane’s artistic practice is defined by an unsettling blend of the grotesque and the theatrical, where bodily absence haunts physical presence, and narrative is fragmented yet compelling. As a founding member of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, Lane emerged from Goldsmiths College and was notably part of the seminal Freeze exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988. Her oeuvre reflects a distinctive preoccupation with the eerie, the morbid, and the liminal—drawing inspiration from Victorian spectacles, medical history, and popular entertainments like magic and the circus.
Lane’s installations often resemble forensic tableaux or theatrical relics. Her use of fragmented bodies—wax casts, inked impressions, dangling embroidery threads—echoes both the sacred and the scientific. These works don’t merely depict but implicate the viewer, functioning as traces or residues of something vanished or in flux. They challenge the finality of form and provoke a visceral response, often couched in dark humour and psychological unease.
Her 2001 exhibition Tomorrow’s World, Yesterday’s Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated), commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and exhibited at Victoria Miro Gallery, marked a shift from physical to psychic spaces. Comprising three video installations—The Figment, The Inclination, and The Inspirator—the exhibition explores internal, often subconscious, terrains. Each film reflects aspects of the psyche: The Figment as the embodiment of instinctual impulse; The Inclination as ethereal longing or memory; The Inspirator as a fleeting muse or imaginative spirit. The theatricality of these works is heightened through sensory elements—lighting, soundscapes, and surreal imagery—creating an immersive and often disorienting psychological landscape.
Lane’s work persists in its ambiguity and resistance to closure. Whether through body imprints or ephemeral projections, she navigates the fragile boundary between what is seen and what is sensed, between presence and absence. Her installations become sites of both introspection and unease—haunted spaces where the uncanny is not only suggested but staged.
Tomorrow’s World, Yesterday’s Fever (Mental Guests Incorporated) is a Milton Keynes Gallery / Film and Video Umbrella collaboration. It was subsequently shown at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London, from October – November 2001.