Money for Nothing, 2021. Single channel video with stereo-sound, 35 minutes.
Money for Nothing, 2021. Single channel video with stereo sound, 35minutes. Installation views from Money for Nothing at Cell Project Space, London, 2023. Photographs by Rob Harris
Money for Nothing, 2021 follows the artist’s friend, Timothy Akister as he looks and finds, trawling scrap metal and salvaging bric-a-brac. Stitching Akister’s tall tales to their material traces, Melia excavates and reassembles a story that moves rhythmically from the 1970s to the present. Recovered treasures and the City of London’s steel and glass skyline, a looming presence in the East London horizon of Akister’s life, shimmer, refracting shifting conceptions of work and value. Cropping close, the camera guides our focus back towards Akister’s gestures and expressions. Throughout the film Melia conjures a sense of folding time and illustrates the ways we use stories to create meaning, construct our identities and form commonalities.
Exhibtions & Screenings:
Money for Nothing premiered at Brewer’s Towner International 2022 at Towner, Eastbourne. It was included in Melia’s solo exhibition, of the same name, at Cell Project Space, London in 2023. The film has since been presented in numerous group shows and screening events, including The Stories We Inhabit - Episode 1:Drifting at IDEAL Art Space, Leipzig and The House That is Falling Apart at the Museum of Macedonia, Skopje.