Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone: Everything Made Bronze

In 2013 a new film by the artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone was screened which made compelling use of two contrasting but related locations: Carlo Scarpa’s famous Gipsoteca plaster-cast gallery in the Museo Canova in Possagno, northern Italy, and the Venice-based plaster workshops of Eugenio de Luigi, one of Scarpa’s most important collaborators. Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and entitled Everything Made Bronze, the film was particularly relevant to the Giorgio Casali exhibition as one of Scarpa’s works was also the subject of a Domus cover image taken by Casali in 1960.

Filmed using a spring-wound camera, the work followed (and further illuminated) the extraordinary play of light in the Gipsoteca over a number of days producing a constantly fluid and changing environment for the appreciation of Canova’s plaster- casts.

Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella. Supported by Arts Council England; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; The Henry Moore Foundation; Goldsmiths, University of London; Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. With the kind cooperation of the Fondazione Canova, Possagno and the De Luigi workshop, Venice.