Matthew Thorne joins The Pool Collective

The POOL COLLECTIVE is pleased to welcome director Matthew Thorne, who has returned to Australia after a year of shooting several projects overseas. This work, shot from East Baltimore to the South Australian Desert, will be released over the coming months.

Before joining POOL, Thorne collaborated with RSA London and 3AM in LA, through which he directed a global brand TVC for Audi attached to Alien: Covenant, and shot a photography series for Huawei with Scarlett Johansen and Henry Cavill. He has also recently joined Stink for representation out of its Berlin office.

View Thorne’s Lexus ‘Step Forward’ film here.

View Thorne’s Lilydale ‘Join the Free Range’ TVC here.

Says Cameron Gray, managing director at POOL: “We were first inspired by the work Matthew is pursuing outside of the traditional commercial realm, including his film and photography series ‘The Sand That Ate The Sea’. This kind of artistic ambition is extremely important to us as a collective. It’s our core philosophy: the influence and application of art in commerce and communicating a brand’s message with a distinctive artistic language. Matthew’s commercials – for CommBank, Lexus, Lilydale – they all do this, which is a great indicator to me that holding onto this ideal and cultivating these projects is meaningful in our creative industry.”

“The Sand That Ate The Sea”, to be released this December, is a multi-format work that Thorne developed over the course of three years while living on-and-off in Andamooka, a red-dirt opal-mining town. Encompassing a narrative film and accompanying photography series – which will tour separately from the film with a sculptural instillation – the work is focused on grief, loss and Australian masculinity. The narrative film is designed to be presented with live orchestra accompaniment. Luke Howard, the film’s composer, will also be releasing a new album of music from the film.

Says Thorne: “I always wanted to make a work that captured that feeling I felt growing up around the desert – that examined our place within the endless horizon and looked at how that land worked on the people that lived there. For me, it’s a portrait of the frontier in its magic, melancholy and mysticism. It’s a work about our relationship to time and how can be moved by grief… and whether we are destined to repeat the mistakes of our family in our own time. In many ways, the project was an homage to my birthplace. It served as a farewell to that land and the energy it invoked in me as well as a thank you to my father for the lessons he imparted on me there.”

Thorne’s film work has been awarded a Gold Lotus at Adfest, A Bronze Lion and Gold Young Director Award at Cannes Lions Festival, a Silver Spikes, a Silver and Bronze Clio, a One Screen Award, and has been an Official Selection of LA Music Video Festival.

His photography has been exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney and Berlin.

To read a recent interview with Thorne about “The Sand That Ate The Sea” visit theheavycollective.com.

For more information, contact Cameron Gray, cameron@thepoolcollective.com.