TJ Wilcox

69 South Audley Street, London W1
For one month Sadie Coles HQ will be filled with FILMS. The exhibition presents an expanded notion of film and is a celebration of this exceptionally diverse and detailed medium, beloved of artists, now being superseded by new digital technologies.

Works will be shown on a variety of formats, specifically 35mm slides, video, 8mm and
16mm film. Each week will showcase work by a different artist:

Sarah Lucas
Sausage Film, 1990, Betacam SP
The first and only film by Lucas is the epitome of her confrontational style: the artist saucily skins, slices and eats a sausage and a banana.
Thursday 17 – Saturday 19 January

TJ Wilcox
The Death and Burial of the First Emperor of China, 1997, 16mm
‘It was in the ‘70s that they found this tomb. It was guarded by these terracotta warriors and now they have found ten thousand of them...’
Tuesday 22 - Saturday 26 January

Jim Lambie
Ultralow, 1998, Beta SP Video
A metronome for our darker hours…
Tuesday 29 January – Saturday 02 February

Wilhelm Sasnal
Kodachrome, 2006, Super-8 film
Europa, 2007, 16mm film
These two films by Sasnal focus on the medium itself, one using just text and soundtrack to describe a classic movie scene, the other a homage to Kodachrome and its place in 20th century history.
Tuesday 05 – Saturday 09 February

Hilary Lloyd
Princess Julia Slide Projection, 1997, 35mm slides
Lloyd’s first slide projection shows Princess Julia journeying to and from work.
Tuesday 12 – Saturday 16 February

N.B. Opening hours Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

For his fourth show at Sadie Coles HQ, the American artist T.J. Wilcox presents three separate films united under one title, A Fair Tale (Extended Mix), as well as six large-scale collages relating to the film’s protagonists. All three films are biographical collages which incorporate a mixture of found footage and original film, and continue the artist’s modernist investigation into the genres of narrative film.
The longest of the three films, A Fair Tale takes us on an enchanted journey through small-town America in the 1970s, a silent memory seen through a child’s eyes and narrated with short, clear subtitles. The other films in the exhibition trilogy, Sissi and The Jerry Hall Story, track the lives of two iconic women living in very different times. Sissi focuses on the tragic life of the Bavarian heroine, Empress Elizabeth of Austria; The Jerry Hall Story tells the unlikely rags-to-riches story of the iconic model who started her career after winning eight-hundred dollars in compensation after a car accident.

For his third exhibition T.J. Wilcox presents a series of twelve new silent films collectively subtitled Garlands, made to be shown together. As in previous works, Wilcox uses a combination of found footage, collaged animation and his own film to make mini-narratives. Strawberry is a film of a fetishized strawberry plant which came to obliquely represent innocence and growth post 9/11; Ortino tells the story of the pet dog of the Romanoff Princesses who was massacred alongside his owners; while Around the World in 80 Seconds is a tribute to the romance of travel. Other films take as their subjects the artist’s beloved stepmother, Ann; melting polar ice caps; bee-keeping; Humpty Dumpty; Ara Tripp, a transsexual from Wilcox’s home town; sunsets; tree planting and the annunciation of Christ. Linking the Garlands is their melancholic ruminations on innocence, romance and courage.

Hadrian and Antinous and The Little Elephant

Hadrian and Antinous and The Little Elephant are two new 16mm films by American artist T.J. Wilcox.

Wilcox’s films collage his own footage with images from cinema, television, and handmade animation into mythical romantic narratives. Hadrian and Antinous is the story of the extraordinary passion that existed between the Roman Emperor and a thirteen year old Greek boy, an ‘ideal contained in beauty’. Passion and immortality are united as Antinous offers his beauty and youth as a sacrifice to save the dying Hadrian. The Little Elephant combines the story of the children’s classic, Babar the Elephant, with The Elephant Man and The Man Who Fell to Earth. This construct tells of the terrified alien lost in the metropolis.

At cocktail parties and similar intimate occasions Marlene Dietrich would entertain her guests with a story of the funeral she envisaged for herself. Over the years, her funeral became a more polished baroque tale with each retelling. In the early 1990’s, when Dietrich did succumb to her own mortality, this grand ceremony was not realised for many reasons (among which was her having outlived most of its star players). T.J. Wilcox’s new film, The Funeral of Marlene Dietrich gives Dietrich the grand farewell she imagined; an appropriately cinematic final act for a film legend who well understood her own immortality.

1965 Born in 1965, Seattle (WA).
Lives and works in New York

1985-89 School of Visual Arts, New York, BFA
1993-95 Art Center College of Design, Pasadena CA, MFA

Solo Exhibitions

2007 T.J. Wilcox, Sadie Coles HQ, London
A Fair Tale & Garland One, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
2006 Garlands, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna
T.J. Wilcox, Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
2005 Archiv & Erzählung: John Stezaker und T. J. Wilcox, Archives & Narration:  John Stezaker and T.J. Wilcox, Kunstverein Munich, Munich, Germany
T.J. Wilcox: Garlands, Metro Pictures, New York
T.J.Wilcox, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (screening)
Museum of Modern Art, New York (screening)
T.J Wilcox: Garlands, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Munich, Germany
T.J. Wilcox, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy
2004 A Garland for Ireland, Temple Bar Outdoors, Dublin
2003 Garlands, Sadie Coles HQ, London; China Art Objects, Los Angeles
T.J. Wilcox, Tate Modern, London (screening and discussion with the artist)
2002 Oh my GR-DVM5, oh oh, GR-DVM5, Metro Pictures, New York
Smorgasbord, MATRIX 198, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley (CA) (cat)
T.J.Wilcox: The Little Elephant, Transmission Basement, Glasgow (film screening)
2001 Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna
Sadie Coles HQ, London
Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
T.J. Wilcox, The Lux, London (film screenings)
2000 T.J. Wilcox, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, Switzerland
1999 T.J. Wilcox: Das Begräbnis der Marlene Dietrich / The Funeral of Marlene TJ Wilcox: Das Begräbnis der Marlene Dietrich / The Funeral of Marlene Dietrich, Galerie Neu, Berlin
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
Sadie Coles HQ, London
Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
1998 T.J. Wilcox, ICA, London (cat.)
1997 Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
The Death and Burial of the First Emperor of China, Gavin Brown’s
Enterprise, New York
1996 Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York

Group Exhibitions

2007 Omina Vanitas: Vanity is ALL, Gavlak Projects, West Palm Beach (FL)
2006 Flaming June (VI), Spanierman Modern, New York
The World’s Most Photographed, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
Gifts of Sound and Vision, 20 St Andrew’s Street, Glasgow, Scotland
2005 Superstars: From Warhol to Madonna, Kunsthalle Wien and Kunstforum Wien, Vienna, Austria (cat.)
May You Live in Interesting Times, Cardiff Festival of Creative Technology, Wales
Gifts of Sound and Vision, Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art, Glasgow
Deriva Mental, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico (film screening)
Restaurant Georges Costes, Centre Pompidou, Paris (film screening)
2004 North Fork/South Fork, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton (NY) (cat.)
Genealogies of Glamour: The Future Has A Silver Lining, Migros Museum für gegenwartskunst, Zurich
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York
Concert In The Egg, The Ship, London
2003 Drawings, Metro Pictures, New York
Today’s Man, John Connelly presents, New York; Hiromi Yoshii, Tokyo
My People Were Fair and Had Cum in Their Hair (but now they’re content to spray stars from your boughs), Team, New York
Fast Forward: Media Art Sammlung Goetz, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
Somewhere Better Than This Place, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (cat.)
2002 Confiture demain…, Centre Regional d’Art Contemporain,
Languedoc Roussillon, France (cat.)
Rapture: Art’s Seduction by Fashion since 1970, Barbican Centre,
London (cat.)
2001 The Americans: New Art, Barbican Centre, London (cat.)
W, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, France (cat.)
2000 Greater New York, PS1, New York
The American Century - Art & Culture 1900-2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1999 Moving Images, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on Hudson (NY)
1998 El Nino, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany
Dialogues (with Sam Easterson), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (MI) (cat.)
1997 XLVII Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
Sunshine and Noir, Art in Los Angeles, 1960-1997, Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark, touring to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg,Germany; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; UCLA at The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles (CA)
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1996 Studio 246, Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles (CA)
Hollywood, LACE, Los Angeles (CA)
Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, Los Angeles (CA)
Persona, Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland and The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (IL) (cat.)
Affairs, The Institute for Contemporary Art, Vienna
Studio 246, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
Sampler II, David Zwirner Gallery, New York
Contemporary Collections, L.A.C.P.S., Los Angeles (CA)
1995 Art Center College of Design, Pasadena (CA)
The Big Night, Bradbury Building, Los Angeles (CA)
Fabrication, The Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange (CA)
1994 Crack babies, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena (CA)
Tom Tiddler’s Ground, Pasadena Plaza, Pasadena (CA)

Museum and Public Collections

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (IL)
La Coleccion Jumex, Mexico
Frac Haute Normandy, France
Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany