Nathaniel Mellors / United Kingdom

England born 1974, works in the Netherlands and United States 2012–

Nathaniel Mellors’s film series Ourhouse chronicles the decline of a wealthy and eccentric English family as they receive an unlikely visit from ‘The Object’, who devours the contents of their library. Over the course of the series, the artist explores the power of language with characteristically dark humour.

Ourhouse episode –1: Time, 2015–16, is the fifth and final episode in the series and Mellors’s most ambitious instalment to date. It deals with contemporary issues surrounding technology and ideas relating to ‘otherness’ or difference as considered through a lens of prehistory. The events unfold in the ‘Northern Wing’ of the family’s dilapidated country manor, inhabited by tribes of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

In Ourhouse, Mellors reconceives Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s classic film Teorema (1968) within a familiar British sitcom format. The series, as well as Mellors’s performances, critical writings and sculptures – including the animatronic vomiter seen here, a recurring character in the Ourhouse series – test social conventions, accepted standards of taste and morality and frequently use science fiction motifs.

BIO

In 2017 Mellors co-represented Finland at the 57th Venice Biennale. He has previously participated in the Taipei Biennial in 2014 and Performa 2011 in New York. Mellors has exhibited at institutions in Europe and the United States, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2014 and the ICA, London, in 2011. He was the recipient of the prestigious COBRA award in 2011.