Here Lies Jonathan Meades: Green 2017

Introduction by Ken Worpole in conversation with Sarah Gaventa, followed by screenings: 'Heaven Folkwoven in England: Garden Cities and their Legacy' (2007) and 'Stowe: Reading a Garden' (2007). Total running time, 1:34mins Jonathan Meades (b. 1947) is a writer, filmmaker, architectural critic, gourmand and Britain's greatest living television essayist. For nearly 30 years, Meades has interrogated art, architecture and the everyday to explore national identity and cultural phenomena through films such as Brutalism to Dictators to Caravanning. Through over 50 films for the BBC, he has developed an on-screen persona of a virtuosic and villainous polemicist, constituting a style of filmmaking that merges cultural criticism with performance art. In this retrospective, we look back through Meades' career from his earliest programmes for the BBC to his most recent filmmaking and writing, a body of work that remains profound, funny and startlingly relevant. The season organised by the Whitechapel Gallery, includes screenings and events with partners the BFI, LRB, Picturehouse Cinemas, Genesis Cinema, Burley Fisher Books, Birkbeck College and The Horse Hospital. Curated by Matthew Harle and Gareth Evans with Jonathan Meades and in association with BFI Television’s Broadcasting The Arts.