Here Lies Jonathan Meades: A Retrospective
BFI, Whitechapel Gallery, RIBA, May-June, 2017
Writer, filmmaker, architectural critic and Britain’s greatest living television essayist Jonathan Meades has interrogated art, architecture and the everyday to explore national identity and cultural phenomena from brutalism to dictators to caravanning. Through over 50 films for the BBC, he has developed an on-screen persona of a virtuoso and villainous polemicist, constituting a style of filmmaking that merges cultural criticism with performance art. In this retrospective, we look back through Meades’ career from his earliest programmes for the BBC to his most recent filmmaking and writing, a body of work that remains profound, funny and startlingly relevant.
Co-curated with Gareth Evans and Jonathan Meades.
Screenings List
On-Stage Interview, BFI Southbank
