Michael Sheen is set to appear on the first episode, “Lights in the Darkness” on April 7 at 9pm. Check out thr first look at him in the series:
More details below:
Art That Made Us is a landmark series that presents an alternative history of the British Isles, told through art.
Looking at 1,500 years and eight dramatic turning points, acclaimed artists and thinkers encounter key historic art works from across the UK that have shaped the history of the British Isles and inspired their own work. Paintings, sculpture, architecture, literature, drama, design and music that emerged at some of the most exciting times of crisis and turbulence in our history are all explored. Some are surprising, others are better-known but reassessed, but all take us to the heart of eight dramatic moments of historical change.
Episode one immerses us in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. After the Romans leave, waves of invasion reshape the Isles and their cultures: from glittering jewellery to carved stones to intricate manuscripts. Battles over identity and faith play out in art and culminate in the rise of a new vernacular language.
In this episode, the artworks explored include sculptor Antony Gormley meeting the fifth century clay figure Spong Man; actor Michael Sheen performs the seventh century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin; Scottish artists Dalziel + Scullion wonder at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (ca.500-800 AD), believed to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom; artist Cornelia Parker investigates gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard that fuse pagan and Christian imagery.
In addition, Reverend. Richard Coles explores the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels; Maria Dahvana Headley analyses how English is used in the epic poem Beowulf; The Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi reveals a new sense of the Isles’ place in the wider world, and David McCandless, British Library curator Claire Breay and graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix take a fresh look at how the Anglo-Saxon age came to a dramatic end in 1066 by exploring the embroidered propaganda of the Norman Conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Art That Made Us (8 x 60’) was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Emma Cahusac, BBC Arts Commissioning Editor. It is a ClearStory and Menace Production and is a co-production with The Open University. It was executive produced by Russell Barnes, Denys Blakeway and Michael Jackson, and the series producer is Melanie Fall.