Steve McQueen (artist) - Short Films

Short Films

Bear (1993) was McQueen's first major film, prestened at the Royal College of Art in London. Although not an overtly political piece, for many it raised rather sensitive issues on race, homoeroticism and violence. It shows a wrestling match between two men who alternate ambiguous relations and gestures of aggression and erotic attraction. The film's protagonists, one of them McQueen, are both black, but issues of race, he has said, are not a priority in his work. Like all McQueen's early films, Bear is black and white. It was shot on 16mm film.

Five Easy Pieces (1995) is a short film by McQueen it literally follows a woman across a tightrope; himself stating the idea that a tightrope walker is "the perfect image of a combination of vulnerability and strength."

Just Above My Head (1996) is a short film which shares close ties with McQueen's preceding film with the key theme of walking. A man - played by McQueen - is shot in a way as so as to crop out his body, but his head appears small at the image's bottom, rising and falling with his step and coming in and out of frame according to the movement of the camera. As stated by David Frankel, the "simultaneous fragility and persistence" is seemingly meant as a metaphor for black life in England as elsewhere.

Exodus (1997) is a sixty-five-second color video which takes the title of a record by Bob Marley as its starting point. It records a found event, two black men carrying potted palms, the greenery waving precariously above their heads, whom McQueen followed down a London street. Then they get on a bus and leave.