Tilda Swinton

This autumn, celebrated Scottish performer, artist, and fashion icon Tilda Swinton is developing the exhibition Tilda Swinton – Ongoing exclusively for Eye Filmmuseum.

Collaborating with esteemed figures from film and art - whom she considers close friends - she is creating six new works for the show together with Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. She also presents work by and with Pedro Almodóvar and the late Derek Jarman.

“With the honour of this extraordinary invitation, Eye has given me the opportunity to reflect on the mechanics of my working practice over the past forty years. And to come to rest on the - ever present - bedrock and battery of the close fellowships I found from the very first and continue to rely upon to this day. In focusing attention on profoundly enriching creative relationships in my life, we share the narratives and atmospheres that inspire us: we offer new work, especially commissioned for the Eye exhibition, as the most recent gestures borne out of various companionable conversations that keep me curious, engaged and nourished. An ongoing - and unbroken - thread of breadcrumbs through the wood, new leaves on long-established trees. The perpetual seedbed. I should be so lucky, in the gift of such an invitation, in such friends and in such a life.” – Tilda Swinton

Since 2012, Eye has produced many exhibitions on cinema, on the art of the moving image, and on filmmakers, but the role of the performer has never taken centre stage in quite this way. Actors and performers are often seen as passive vessels to be filled or moulded by directors. Tilda Swinton – Ongoing focuses on her active contribution, the potential for co-authorship, and creative agency.

By inviting collaborators with whom she has shared close working relationships, conversations and creative exchange over decades, Swinton reveals how these long-standing connections shape the films and (art)works that they create together.

Creative Collaborators

Nature, memory, the essence of remembrance, ancestors and spirits, friendships and fellowships, and the liminal space of artistic creation - these are recurring themes in Tilda Swinton’s work, often explored in collaboration with her artistic partners. In Ongoing, these ideas take shape across multiple forms.

Swinton presents eight works in partnership with her creative collaborators. Five of these are co-created with filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmusch, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The sixth, a performance and installation, is being developed with fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard, drawing inspiration from Swinton’s personal archive. The seventh, captured through the lens of photographer Tim Walker, offers an intimate reflection on her roots.

Legacy of Derek Jarman

The legacy of filmmaker Derek Jarman also plays a prominent role in the exhibition: in the eighth work, Swinton is presenting never-before-seen archival material from his 8mm oeuvre.