Image: Phil Collins, ‘Ceremony’, 2018. © the artist. Courtesy of Shady Lane Productions, Berlin. Photo: Yevgen Nikiforov
Phil Collins’s exhibition ‘Nothing Is Inevitable Until It Happens’ is on view through 30 August at Cukrarna’s basement exhibition space in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Presented as part of the venue’s new series of video exhibitions, the project brings together three films by the British artist and examines connections between politics, popular culture and everyday life through moving image, music and documentary approaches. Admission is free.
Organised as a three-week projection cycle, the exhibition gives each film a week in the space before repeating the sequence. The programme began with ‘Ceremony’ (2018) from 4 to 7 June, followed by ‘Mixtape #1’ (2024) from 9 to 14 June and ‘Tomorrow Is Always Too Long’ (2014) from 16 to 21 June. The cycle then resumed, with ‘Ceremony’ scheduled for 25 to 30 August, the exhibition’s final week.
‘Ceremony’, a 67-minute film, follows a Soviet-era statue of Friedrich Engels on a journey from a village in eastern Ukraine to Manchester, where Engels lived and worked for more than two decades. The work combines elements of a road movie, experimental television and socialist mass spectacles. According to the exhibition text, it considers contemporary British social reality while revisiting communism as a visionary alternative to political and emotional conditions shaped by global capitalism.
The 117-minute ‘Mixtape #1’ offers a collage-based survey of Collins’s moving-image practice. Its materials include excerpts, fragments, music videos, animations and previously unreleased footage made over more than 20 years. Inspired by the intimate logic of a homemade cassette compilation, the film brings together varied genres and traces recurring formal and conceptual threads across the artist’s projects.
‘Tomorrow Is Always Too Long’, running for 82 minutes, emerged from a year-long collaboration with public institutions in Glasgow. Described by Cukrarna as a contemporary urban symphony and a love letter to the city, the documentary musical combines archival footage, improvised television programmes, animation and songs by Cate Le Bon. The songs are performed by Glasgow residents and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, placing local communities’ sensitivity, humour and energy at the centre of the work.
Cukrarna describes Collins’s broader practice as moving between film, music, performance and political commentary. His projects often develop through extended collaboration with communities and individuals, addressing the ways ideology, popular culture, labour, longing and collective memory shape lived reality. Music functions not simply as accompaniment but as a social structure through which communities can speak, connect and imagine alternative forms of living together.
Curated by Alenka Gregorič, ‘Nothing Is Inevitable Until It Happens’ is on view from Thursday 4 June to Sunday 30 August, Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 7pm. Cukrarna is part of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, a public institution whose founder is the City of Ljubljana.
