" MATTHEW BARNEY'S BEAUTIFUL CREMASTER CYCLE IS THE FIRST GREAT FUSION OF ART AND CINEMA SINCE UN CHIEN ANDALOU. "  The Guardian

"MATTHEW BARNEY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN ARTIST OF HIS GENERATION... ART IS SUPPOSED TO STICK IN YOUR MIND, AND SOMETIMES YOUR CRAW. BARNEY'S FILMS DO BOTH."  The New York Times

For the first time in Sydney, as part of an exclusive Australian premiere season, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in conjunction with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Accent Film Entertainment, will screen Matthew Barney's legendary The Cremaster Cycle.

Eight years in the making, The Cremaster Cycle is destined to be the one of cinematic events of the year. Acclaimed around the world as brilliantly imaginative and visually stunning, all five films will be shown together in brand new 35 mm prints.

"Barney's visionary narrative films use a richly evocative cinematic language, which draws on Celtic mythologies, the American musical, the gothic western and film noir. Each film is entirely self-contained while cumulatively they form an elaborate allegory about sexual differentiation, " said Wayne Tunnicliffe, Curator of Contemporary Australian Art.

Barney writes and directs each Cremaster film, and often plays one or more roles. The Cremaster Cycle was recently shown, along with the sculptures, photographs and objects that accompany each film, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

CREMASTER 1 (1995, 40 mins)
In twin hovering Goodyear blimps, a platinum starlet builds geometric patterns from red and green grapes mirrored by Busby Berkeley-style showgirls on the blue-astroturf field below.

CREMASTER 2 (1999, 79 mins)
"A sprawling, hallucinatory quiltwork of gorgeously shot scenes and ominous organ music, all slowly unfolding a circuitous plot involving Gary Gilmore (Matthew Barney), copulating bees, members of the Gilmore clan, Houdini (Norman Mailer), a Brahma bull, the Mormon Tabernacle and landscapes ranging from Utah�s blindingly bright salt flats to the glacial ice fields of Jasper, Canada� A world as strange as Lewis Carroll's." (Time)

CREMASTER 3 (2002, 180 mins)
Barney's The Entered Apprentice faces off against Chrysler Building architect Hiram Abiff (played by sculptor Richard Serra) in the Art Deco landmark, while battling punk bands, Rockette-like chorines, and a half-cheetah woman (Aimee Mullins) as he scales the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum in an interlude. "Endlessly fascinating� Barney's most hypnotic work yet." (New York Magazine)

CREMASTER 4 (1994, 42 mins)
"Flame-Haired Satyr The Loughton Candidate (Matthew Barney) slowly taps his way through an eroding floor into the sea, as competing colour coded motorcycle teams set off in opposite directions to circle the Isle of Man."
"A surreal, slapstick fantasy; sexuality turned into a bizarre vaudeville." (New York Times)

CREMASTER 5 (1997, 55 mins)
Ursula Andress (Dr No) stars as the Queen of Chain, the sole audience for a lush operatic spectacle performed by the Budapest Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra within a grand 19th century opera house, accompanied by fairies, a magician (Barney on horseback), various attendants of unspecified gender and species, and a bevy of live pigeons. "A ravishing stretch of cinema� rich and quite, quite strange." (Artforum)

DATES & SESSION TIMES
Saturday 6 & 20 March 2004

10.30am - 12.30pm Cremaster 1 & 2
1.30pm - 4.30pm Cremaster 3
5.00pm - 7.00pm Cremaster 4 & 5

Individual sessions $12/$10concession
Day pass $30/$25 concession.
Bookings Telephone: (02) 9225 1878

MEDIA INFORMATION
Jan Batten, Press Office
Telephone (02) 9225 1791 or  0418 279 348 
Email: janb@ag.nsw.gov.au

To coincide with the national tour of The Cremaster Cycle, �ccent Film Entertainment will simultaneously release a fully interactive, multi-angle limited edition DVD of The Order from Cremaster 3 in a deluxe digi-pack DVD. The Order is a dizzying mirror of the fantastical CREMASTER CYCLE and features Matthew Barney as a tartan-clad apprentice seeking Masonic redemption in a death-defying race to the top of New York's landmark Guggenheim Museum. Available exclusively in Sydney at the Art Gallery of New South Wales bookshop.

Image: Cremaster 1 1995. Photo Michael James O'Brien. Courtesy of Barbara Gladstone. Marti Domination as Goodyear