Blast! Film Screening

Film screening arranged by The Borough Road Gallery.

Murray Grigor's 1975 documentary 'Blast!' splices together newsreel, text, and images to transport us back to 'the years of the vortex', to a pre-war society revelling in the advances and liberations of the machine-age.

Propelled forward into avant-garde territory by the material and social changes around them, the British Vorticist artists adopted an angular, yet whirling style of painting and sculpting to depict novel machinery and energetic urban life. Although he was never officially affiliated with the rebel group, David Bomberg's 'In the Hold' of 1913 is one such work, executed in the spirit of the short-lived Vorticist movement before the outbreak of WWI.

This bold experiment in dissecting figures into geometric forms can perhaps be seen as an early iteration of Bomberg's search for 'the spirit in the mass' beyond naturalistic representation. The painting evidences the artist's desire to attack established points of view and ways of doing things, a conviction which persisted throughout his career as both artist and teacher.