John (working title), Duncan Campbell

Dates: 13 November – 20 December 2009 | Location: Chisenhale Gallery, London

For his first solo public exhibition in London, Chisenhale Gallery premieres a new film by Glasgow-based artist Duncan Campbell co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, Film and Video Umbrella and Tramway, Glasgow.

Combining archive news material with newly-filmed footage, the film looks back over the history of the failed Belfast-based car plant set up by engineer and businessman John DeLorean, with the help of £85 million in public grants from the British Government. The film considers DeLorean’s own personal rise and fall as mirrored in the example of the slickly stylish but technically flawed DMC12 sports car that was produced at the factory – an icon of the 1980s the car featured as the homemade time machine in the film Back to the Future. Campbell’s work deftly contrasts the car’s glamorous image of upward mobility with its maker’s spectacular crash.