Serpentine Cinema: Adriana Lara, Shortsighted

The film and performance programme, Shortsighted, brings together a selection of films by Mexican artist Adriana Lara, produced over the span of her artistic career. This programme will include a live performance by guitarist David Massey as well as the premiere of Ocuardo (Awkward), a film by Lara featuring a new soundtrack by electronic musician Leafcutter John.

Working with sculpture, film, painting and installation, Lara combines an acute eye for paradoxes and mind traps with a sense of the humorous, folding the spectator or onlooker into convivial situations that subtly reveal the complexities underpinning everyday processes and gestures. The films range from computer-generated animation to a black-and-white film influenced by Italian neorealism. A conversation with the artist will follow the screening. This will be Lara's first solo presentation in London, in conjunction with the launch of the latest issue of her fanzine, Pazmaker, hosted by Fiorucci Art Trust.

Adriana Lara lives and works in Mexico City. She has had one-person exhibitions at Kusnsthalle Basel; Air de Paris; the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Artpace San Antonio; Algus Greenspon, New York and Indipendenza, Rome. Group exhibitions include Marrakech Biennale 5 and dOCUMENTA (13) among others. Lara participates in the collaborative curatorial project Perros Negros and the music collective Lasser Moderna.

Leafcutter John is an internationally renowned electronic musician, songwriter, and artist. He has released five critically acclaimed albums has performed his award-winning work worldwide. He has worked in dance, theatre, and teaches at Brunel University. John has worked with Talvin Singh, Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, BBC Symphony and Concert orchestras, and has played concerts worldwide with Beck, Jarvis Cocker, Matmos, Grace Jones, Nick Cave, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Yo La Tengo, Beth Orton, Otomo Yoshihide, Aki Onda, Philip Jeck, Tujiko Noriko Sebastian Rochford, Janek Schaefer and Tomoko Takahashi.

David Massey studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He has performed at Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room at Southbank Centre, Sage Gateshead, Kings Place and St Martin in the Fields, amongst others, and premièred several new works. Massey has an ongoing duo partnership with flautist Emily Andrews (www.andrewsmasseyduo.com), with whom he has released three CDs. Serpentine Cinema is a series of artists’ and film-makers’ screenings, incorporating a live element and held in a cinema context. In partnership with Picturehouse Cinemas.