MATTHEW BARNEY - NO RESTRAINT IN SOUTH AFRICA

From 1995 to 2002 avant-garde artist Matthew Barney wrote directed and starred in the Cremaster Cycle five offbeat films featuring unusual situations and bizarre characters. Since 1987 he has also been working on the Drawing Restraint series in which he uses physical weights and barriers to make the creation of his art more difficult--and more rewarding in the end. In 2005 he released DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 a film about a man (Barney) and a woman (Bj rk Barneys real-life wife) who board a Japanese whaling ship and participate in some strange rituals and ceremonies involving a tank filling up with 45 000 pounds of petroleum jelly. Director Alison Chernick documents the making of DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 in MATTHEW BARNEY NO RESTRAINT mixing in clips from the film behind-the-scenes interviews and home-movie footage of Barney playing high-school football. She also examines Barneys entire career speaking with gallery owner Barbara Gladstone New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector and Yuko Hasegawa chief curator of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa Japan which presented a major exhibition on the Drawing Restraint series including a screening of the film in the summer of 2005. It is not essential to have seen DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 before seeing MATTHEW BARNEY NO RESTRAINT which is more than just a making-of documentary its about the creative process itself. The ethereal music is provided by Bjork and Mayumi Miyata.