Chris Paul Daniels makes films that respond to place, often merging experimental observation with communal memory and unreliable narration.
Chris Paul Daniels is an Artist and Filmmaker, based in Manchester. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010 and co-won the Deutsche Bank Award for Art with Maria Anastassiou for Unravel, the longest hand painted film in Britain. This project resulted in one hundred public events across the UK including Tate Britain, BFI Southbank, Turner Contemporary and IKON Gallery and a residency at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Recent commissions include ‘SAFE’ at HOME in Manchester, ‘A Tigers Skin’ at Centre For Chinese Contemporary Art ,‘One Square Mile’ for Quays Culture and University of Salford Art Collection (with Sam Meech). Screenings include ICA, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Maxxi, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. His work ‘Northern Lights’, inspired by the Blackpool Illuminations, was co-commissioned by ICA and The Grundy Art Gallery and acquired by the Grundy Art Gallery/Blackpool Council Collection via The Art Fund.
The Book of Lies
Three screen installation / 12:04 min / 2019
01:46 min excerpt (installation view)
The Book of Lies is the name of a journal left by Pike Ward – an English fish merchant proclaimed as ‘The Best Known Man in Iceland’ in the early twentieth century, but largely forgotten soon after.
In 2019, Chris Paul Daniels matched his own 8mm film documentations of Iceland with Pike Ward’s; as two Englishmen a century apart. An unseen narrator interrogates the authority of the images of both as spectators and travellers – rooted in the same landscapes and photo-chemical processes but traversed across time.
This three screen installation was originally exhibited at the National Museum of Iceland and was commissioned by Curated Places Einkofi Productions, it features an original soundtrack by Graham Massey (808 State, Massonix).