The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview
- Submitting institution
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Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 38
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Galerie Art Concept, Paris; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Los Angeles Hammer Museum
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
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- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Based on research into the Upper Palaeolithic era, ‘The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview’ is an absurdist fantasy in which a contemporary man interviews a Neanderthal artist exiled from his cave by an organisation called The Sporgo, who control all cave art. The cave is a metaphor for the shift from a hunter-gatherer existence to an economic model based on the ownership of goods, The Sporgo representing an anachronistic version of the latter, demonstrating the timelessness of power relations.
Though satirical, the film explores serious ecological and economic issues. Its method is to question the emergence of art as an accepted marker of human intelligence by interpolating into pre-history a Neanderthal ‘practice’ – a practice beholden to institutional factors similar to those facing contemporary artists.
The work appeared at Galerie Art Concept, Paris; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin. Mellors gave a public lecture at Hammer and was publicly interviewed at CCA and Temple Bar. The work won the Andaz Art Donation Prize at Art Rotterdam and was collaboratively purchased by The Stedelijk Museum and De Hallen museum, Netherlands. Also purchased by the Hammer Museum, it subsequently appeared in the solo exhibition ‘Progressive Rocks’ (The New Museum, New York), and continues to travel, receiving half a million visitors across all venues, being reviewed nationally and internationally.
The significance of this work lies in its exploration of the subjective way in which we interpret the past. The Neanderthal is interviewed by contemporary man, but in the Neanderthal's own present. The historic present is often used in TV re-enactments, but because Mellors’ characters occupy a present outside history their dialogue has an emotional immediacy that documentary re-enactments lack. The experimental approach to film-making thus has a human purpose, not just an artistic one.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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