IAN GILES

Performance and Workshop, 2025

Cubitt

A performative talk linking Islington’s pioneering queer activism to the local landscape. The UK’s first gay protest was staged in Highbury Fields in 1970 and the London Gay Switchboard was founded on Caledonian Road in 1974.

The public workshop used clay and natural materials gathered from Highbury Fields to contemplate the queer narratives embedded within the local landscape.

The group's ceramics were fired in a hand-built kiln

Supported by AN Artist Bursaries and with thanks to Sean Elders and Cubitt

Film, 2024

Everyone Involved features ‘A Gay Song’, which is heralded as the first LGBTQIA+ protest song recorded onto vinyl in 1972. Giles reformed the original band to re-record the song 52 years after its inception.

Commissioned by 'a space arts'. Funded by Arts Council England, Artfund, National Lottery Heritage Fund and FoSMAG for Southampton City Art Gallery Collection.

Selected Press

The Guardian

BBC News

BBC Radio

Video Installation, 2024

God's House Tower, Southampton

The 4-channel film Everyone Involved is shown within a carpeted conversation pit and alongside monumental wall hangings made from vintage fabrics and found textiles.

Commissioned by 'a space arts'. Funded by Arts Council England, Artfund, National Lottery Heritage Fund and FoSMAG

Collection of Southampton City Art Gallery

Selected Press

The Guardian

BBC News

BBC Radio

A Play, 2023

Museum of the Home

Created with Louis Rembges

Funded by Arts Council England

A hedonistic drama about the lives and loves of the pioneering queer squatters who fought for a place to call home in 1970s Brixton. The play includes a full revival of 'Mr Punch's Nuclear Family' by the Brixton Faeries. With Puppets by Oliver Hyman and Music by Sophie Crawford.

Selected Press

Frieze

BBC Radio London

Another Magazine

Polari Press

Sound installation, phones, mattresses, ink paintings, live performance | 2023

MIMA

This audiowork is inspired by pay-per-minute erotic phone lines that the artist relied on as a rural teen. Accessed via Nokia 3310’s, the 13-minute saga shares Middlesbrough’s gay histories in the style of novelists E.M Forster and Catherine Cookson. The narrative blends fact and fiction to create a queer past.

The story was also performed in the gallery by local actors, alongside paintings related the process of researching and creating the work across an 18 month period.

Curated by Helen Welford and Danielle Ash

Performed by: Audrey Cook, Matt Waller, Will Darwin, David Tuffnell and Mark Rathbone. Violin by Nell Catchpole.

Commissioned by Navigator North and MIMA as part of Celebrating Hidden Middlesbrough, funded by Historic England, Middlesbrough Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. 

Selected Press

Corridor 8 Review

Film | 31 minutes | 2023

Funded by Arts Council England and supported by AA2A

Edward / Maurice explores the legacy of two of Cambridge's most acclaimed writers: Christopher Marlowe and E.M Forster. 

Christopher Marlowe's 16th Century play Edward II and E.M Forster’s novel Maurice, both feature fully realised complex gay protagonists within historic settings.

The film is set on the final day of a summer drama camp; a young LGBTQI+ group embody and share these texts to explore how history, power and class have shaped rhetoric around gay relationships across the centuries. 

The words spoken in the film have been collaged together from a wide range of sources including snippets borrowed from radio documentaries, academic research and transcribed conversations with friends and experts.  

Installation views | 2023

Film, crash mats, t-shirts, mirrors, puppets, ink paintings

Heong Gallery

Performance, Interventions and Communal meals | 2023

Commissioned by Van Gogh House

Performed by Josh-Susan Enright, Ian Giles, Emma Prendergast, Ryan Still, PK Taylor and Genevieve Dawson

Music by Sophie Crawford

Cooking by Cafe Van Gogh

Curated by Anna Bromwich

Photos by Liz Gorman

Funded by Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust

Audio Drama | 13 minutes | 2023

Broadcast on BBC Radio Tees

Listen on BBC Sounds

Curated by MIMA and Navigator North

Commissioned as part of Celebrating Hidden Middlesbrough, funded by Historic England, Middlesbrough Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England.

Performed by: Audrey Cook, Matt Waller, Will Darwin, David Tuffnell and Mark Rathbone. Violin by Kate Reeves.

Produced for the BBC by Rachel Teate supported by Creative Lives

MIMA curatorial team: Helen Welford and Danielle Ash

2022

A limited edition candle and performance to commemorate the first London Gay Pride March, based on conversations with members of the Gay Liberation Front.

A Play, 2021

Supported by the Jerwood New Work Fund and Arts Council England

Performed and created with the Brixton Pansies

Cast: Manish Gandhi, Sam Wightman, Aoife Smyth, Rhys Cook, Nicholas Marrast-Lewis, Josh-Susan Enright, Roly Botha and Dan de la Motte.

Production team: Ian Giles (Director) Louis Rembges (Writer), Brixton Faeries (Writers), Georgina Pead (Stage Manager), Oliver James Hymans (Puppet Designer), Sophie Crawford and Hatty Carman (Music) Harry Stayt (Set and Prop design), Jane Wells (Event Curator), Ian Townson (Walk leader) and Rosa Abbott (Press and Communications).

Event and Installation | 2020

Commissioned by LU Arts Loughborough University

Photos: Julian Hughes / curated by Nick Slater

Walks, Events, Installation 2019

Commissioned by New Geographies & Funded by Arts Council England

Produced by Orginalprojects; with Firstsite, Kettle’s Yard and Outpost

Contributing artists and writers: James McDermott, Rachel Pimm, Paul Kindersley, Mark Scott Wood, Georgie Manly, Isobel Webster, Katie Kennedy, Alison Graham, Jason Evans and David Shenton.

Collection of Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery

Selected Press

New Geographies Podcast Episode 4: Ian Giles

The Guardian

Blouin Art Info

That’s Cambridge TV

The Learned Pig

16mm Film transferred to digital | 5 minutes 2019

Film | 25 minutes | 2019

Funded by Arts Council England

Selected Press

thisistommorrow

Corridor8

Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club | 2019

An evening of films by Prem Sahib, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Ian Giles, Charlotte Prodger and P. Staff

Presented by Gasworks and videoclub

Selected Press

thisistommorrow

Corridor8

Film | 34 minutes | 2018

Commissioned by Chelsea Space

Funded by Arts Council England & supported by Hospitalfield

Selected Press

Artforum

Out Magazine

Hyperallergic

Map Magazine

thisistommorrow

Installation view

Chelsea Space

Selected Press

Artforum

MAP

thisistomorrow

Hyperallergic

Out

Event and Installation | 2019

KV Leipzig

with Tina Kaden and representatives from the Squeezie Queer Zinefest Leipzig

Photos: Caspar Sänger / curated by Anna Jehle and Juliane Schickedanz

Film, carpet, chairs, posters, plants, curtain, speakers and events | 2016

Selected Press

thisistomorrow

Temporary Art Review

Performance | 2016

Produced in collaboration with Whitechapel Youth Forum

Whitechapel Gallery

Soundcloud

Workshops, community produced ceramics, soundscape, speakers, formica, steel, paper, talk and website | 2015

Poole Museum

Arts Council England

Selected Press

thisistomorrow

Film | 9 minutes 38 Seconds | 2014

Supported by LUX

Film & Performance | 25 minutes | 2011

Music produced in collaboration with Sam Lee

Commissioned by Up Projects for the Floating Cinema by Live Art Development Agency and The Canary Wharf Group