Popular Unrest, Melanie Gilligan

From 7 May to 20 June Chisenhale Gallery premieres a new film and installation commission by Melanie Gilligan. Gilligan works in video, performance, text, installation and music. Her new film Popular Unrest is a multi-episode drama set in a future much like the present that explores a world in which the self is reduced to physical biology. All exchange transactions and social interactions are overseen by a system called ‘the Spirit’. As a rash of unexplained killings breaks out across the globe, groups of unrelated people begin to come together everywhere – unaccountably  feeling a deep and persistent sense of connection to one another.

Popular Unrest is co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London, Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver and Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff. Supported by Galleria Franco Soffiantino, Turin.

Melanie Gilligan lives and works in London and New York.  In 2008 she released Crisis in the credit system, a four-part fictional mini drama about the recent financial crisis, made specifically for internet viewing and distribution, commissioned and produced by Artangel Interaction. In 2009 she completed a single screen film Self-capital (2009), commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts London as part of the group exhibition Talk Show. In October 2009 Gilligan was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists.