It was such an honour to be invited by Oscar Award winner Tim Yip to be included in his remarkable film LOVE INFINITY now streaming on Mubi. It premiered at the National Gallery 24th March which was where I collapsed. Tim Yip Celebrates London’s eccentric artists via a dreamscape in which London’s extraordinary history emerges as a character in its own right. It is an exploration and celebration both of the eccentric artists of London and the extraordinary history of this remarkable City which has attracted eccentrics and artists from around the globe since 1603.
Unlike any city of the world, London was deigned, built and later rebuilt by and for the artists and artisans who have shaped the way we live and who continue to do so.
Even now, London’s real owners are the artists who perpetually defy all attempts to squeeze them out. This remarkable film is available for streaming on MUBI along with an equally compelling documentary about the artists involved in LOVE INFINITY.
I was hugely honoured to be invited to be part of the Oscar Winning Art Director and Costume Designer, (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) Tim Yip’s latest film, Love Infinity – an exploration and celebration both of the eccentric artists of London and the extraordinary history of this remarkable City which has attracted eccentrics and artists from around the globe since 1603.
Among the eccentrics starring in Love Infinity…. Gilbert & George, Vivienne Westwood, Andrew Logan, Daniel Lismore, Pandemonia, Stephen Jones and Tyne O’Connell.
During the reign of the British Isle’s first openly gay monarch, King James I (1603 – 1625), and his son Charles I (1625-1649), James’s cross-dressing wife Queen Henri, shunned the political and religious spheres to unleash the unique power of The Arts to dissolve barriers of class, gender, sexuality, religion and race to effect change and liberate. Unfortunately the freedoms of the Halcyon Age enraged the Puritans triggering the Puritan Wars led by Oliver Cromwell against The Arts, tolerance, beauty, fun and democracy in 1642.
Cromwell’s tyranny of genocides and oppression criminalised artists artisans and LGBTQs. It ended with his death in 1658. The Restoration in 1660 reignited the arts but ever since London has been gripped by political and religious debates over the virtues or ungodliness of The Arts.
In LOVE INFINITY Tim Yip steers us deftly on an Odyssey through London’s History in which the city emerges as a lead character whose past present and future flow into each other in a dream scape of artists in a whirligig of splendour.