"A large screen hangs in the middle of a darkened room, on it projected some shaky Super 8 footage that punctures the blackness with the glare of the Caribbean sun. A young man, slim and athletic, stands on the end of a boat, posing for the camera and drawing us in with a flirtatious smile. As green islands bob up and down behind him, he sits down on the edge and occasionally glances back. At one point he falls into the water, splashing drops onto the camera. The intimacy of Steve McQueen’s film is palpable, like a public airing of a private home video; it would feel invasive were it not so alluring. What soon becomes apparent, though, is that something is not right, and the audio is at odds with what’s onscreen. The sounds of crashing waves were recorded at the shore, and Ashes (2014) takes place out at sea. Discarded from his 2002 work Carib’s Leap, the footage – shot by cinematographer Thomas Müller – was left for 12 years before McQueen returned to Grenada in the hope of tracking down its subject, the namesake of this new work. What he found instead was that Ashes had died, the story of which is now retold in a series of interviews that make up the plaintive soundtrack. Ashes’s friends describe how he found a stash of drugs hidden on a beach, deciding to take them for himself and make some money. Soon afterwards he was hunted down by dealers looking for their stolen goods and was shot in the hand, back, legs and stomach, mostly after he had turned to run away." - Dan Udy, "Steve McQueen: Ashes"

Sitography: ART FUND, "Ashes", www.artfund.org
www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/13443/ashes

BIENNALE DI VENEZIA, "Ashes", www.artsandculture.google.com, 2015
artsandculture.google.com/asset/ashes-steve-mcqueen/9AHqbnRpwgr0eg

UDY, Dan, "Steve McQueen: Ashes", www.artreview.com, 15/12/2014
artreview.com/december-2014-review-steve-mcqueen/