Nathaniel Mellors

Ourhouse

The five-part film’s narrative presents a wealthy European family who are unexpectedly confronted by a mysterious manifestation, ‘The Object’, which suddenly appears in the living room of their country home. This imposing figure seems to have a profound effect on the conduct of each individual family member. At night ‘The Object’ eats pages from ideological texts, which it subsequently spits out again. Owing to this, the father figure, ‘Daddy’, changes radically from an elitist with liberal economic convictions, to someone who goes in search of collectivist ideals. The Ourhouse series commenced production in 2010, with the latest episode completing production in 2016.

Giantbum

Taking language, the most important means of social interaction as his starting point, Mellors has created a visual spectacle which leads the viewer through the various phases of a script. As theatrical as it is absurd, the script relates the course of an expedition that set out in the year 1213. A band of starving explorers is trapped within a giant's body. Sent off by his followers the group's spiritual leader, The Father, attempts to find a way out through the giant's entrails. The Father returns to the group 'born-again', having survived by cannibalism and coprophagia (eating faeces). He 'recycles' himself and becomes potentially everlasting. This leads to reflections on his ontological situation and has bad implications for his followers as he becomes increasingly cultish and manipulative, claiming the group is not lost inside the body of a Giant, but inside the bowels of God...