What's on Blog Watch Paradise, Lost: 3 new animated shorts As part of our 2023 Adam Reynolds Award Shortlist programme, we commissioned three artists - Djofray Makumbu, Tilly PM, and Ernie Maltby - to create new animated films under the title Paradise, Lost. Over the coming month, we will be premiering these films for the first time. Find out more about the ARA Shortlist 2023 The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n… John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667 The three animations in Paradise, Lost - using claymation, stop motion, and digital techniques - respond creatively to the theme of ‘failed utopias’. Confronting the tension between expectation and reality, these compelling new works offer raw takes on the stories handed down to us by society, remodelling ‘paradise’ to make sense of a changing world. All films are captioned and audio described. Please note, you will only be able to watch the films (in any format) once they have been premiered. Keep reading for premiere dates. The Voice - Djofray Makumbu About the film "I’m a artist. I can do this. Is that what you tell yourself?" Moody lo-fi music, puppetry and clay modelling combine in a personal and touching story of a talented young artist with imposter syndrome. Dwelling on the implications for his mental health, the artist records his struggle to contain the pressure of competing inner voices, whilst striving for a pathway out of drudgery and oppression. Djofray Makumbu Djofray Makumbu is a British Congolese artist born and based in East London. His work draws on his own personal experiences and those of the people close to him, and he often collaborates with friends and family. Recent projects have focused on the shame and stigma of mental health difficulties and disability, the pressures and violence of inner-city life from the perspective of young people and the joy of music and dancing. Peel - Tilly PM About the film What is left behind through our shed skins? What tales and truths do they tell? Humour and fear are delicately entangled in this poetic story inspired by Scottish and Irish folklore. Taking the viewpoint of a Selkie, a creature able to move between seal and human forms, it draws on traditions wherein the fisherman might take the Selkie’s skin in order to keep her trapped in the human form he so desired, but could not stop her longing for the sea. Using photography as well as fragmented papery and fish scale collages, Tilly PM explores the ancient roots of storytelling that surround water-locked land and grapple with the mortality of the sea. Tilly PM Tilly is excited by narrative story telling and the delicate entanglement of humour and fear, looking at visceral senses through horror. They’re excited by mystical mundanity, the gaps around us (metaphorical and physical) being a seedbed of fantasy of self, objects and our surroundings. They work with collage as a way to try and make physical objects/ 3D/ animation have fun and play! Tilly has worked with The White Pube, Arebyte, Shape Arts, QUAD, and they are currently a committee member at Market Gallery, Glasgow.d, but could not stop her longing for the sea. Vyhod/exit - Ernie Maltby About the film A surreal and kaleidoscopic meander through strained memories of prevailing state complicity, by a UK-based emerging artist and filmmaker. Reflecting on growing up in Russia, ambivalence & grief surrounding home and healthcare enmesh in echoes of planned negligence, conditioned immunity to war, and erasure of communities. Scavenged materials, whirring scraps of machinery and interrogatory lighting are forged into life in corners of domesticity against a boiling musical score to create a modern fairytale. Ernie Maltby Ernie Maltby is a visual artist and animator based in East Devon. Their practice is influenced by the complexities among the dislocating and transitional experiences of migration, bodily autonomy, loss, and disability. Maltby primarily focuses on themes surrounding the exploration of space and the heartbreak that surrounds it, how we occupy and engage with it geophysically, and what it means to exist in the space of your own body. These dichotomies create ground for exploration using performative introspectiveness, examining home and belonging within an unrecognisable self-identity. Manage Cookie Preferences