Venue
Brunel Goods Shed
Starts
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Ends
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Address
Brunel Goods Shed Station Road Stroud GL5 3AP
Location
South West England

SVA, the Site Festival host organisation, is pleased to announce that the opening exhibition will be Sometimes Still by Darren Almond, supported by Darbyshire and White Cube. Sometimes Still is an imposing six-screen high-definition video Almond filmed on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto, Japan, over several years. This will be its first showing in the UK.In the film Almond and his camera accompany a Tendai novitiate monk during a nightly marathon, part of the novitiate’s broader engagement with the Buddhist process of Kaihōgyō; a seven year feat of physical and mental endurance by which these monks attempt to reach a state of enlightenment. The ritual is considered a “limit-experience”, intended to promote a concentrated, intense experience of body and time, testing the human limits of endurance. The 25 minute film follows the monk leaving the temple at night, crossing and passing underneath roads and finally returning to the temple at dawn.Darren Almond, one of the most significant British artists of the past decade, was a YBA Sensation artist and Turner Prize nominee in 2005. Darren Almond’s diverse work, incorporating film, installation, sculpture and photography, deals with evocative meditations on time and duration as well as the themes of personal and historical memory. Darren Almond is represented by White Cube.