Biography
Jeff Keen (b.1923 Trowbridge, Wiltshire, UK, d.2012 Brighton, UK). Keen’s films featured in seminal historical film festivals and exhibitions such as the ‘International Underground Film Festival’ at the National Film Theatre, London (1970) and ‘Perspectives on Avant-Garde Film’, Hayward Gallery, London (1977). Recent solo shows include Kate MacGarry, London (2016); Hales Gallery, London (2013); and Tate Modern (2012). His work is in the collections of BFI, Tate and The Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust.
Keen was an experimental film-maker, poet and artist. His work has not had the recognition it deserves, and has only recently been purchased by Tate following the 2012 retrospective Shoot the Wrx at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. O Here Comes the Seafaring Man, shown in this exhibition, is an evocative and allusively cinematic example of Keen’s early collage-making work. It was through collage that Keen found a crucial stepping-stone between art and film in the 1950s. O Here Comes the Seafaring Man shows a sailor in search of the carnivalesque pleasures on offer in a seaside town. Keen combines a surrealist drawing style (typical of his early drawings from the 1940s) with cut-outs from magazines to create a playful and humorous depiction of human desire.
