Millennial Prayer is a personal essay film that aims to decipher what it meant to transition into adulthood at the turn of the new millennium. Artist Guy Oliver, born 1982, falls into the age tier labelled “first generation millennial” along with such esteemed peers as Prince William, Beyoncé, Mark Zuckerberg, Amy Winehouse, Tommy Robinson and JD Vance to name a few. Falling on this threshold of history they are uniquely identified as experiencing analogue childhoods and digital adulthoods, so how is this generation holding up? In the words of the band Grandaddy from the song He’s Simple, He’s the Pilot, “How’s it Going 2000 man?”

What was the formative cultural milieu of that time that helped define their collective sense of identity and shape the way we saw this newly rebranded future. What did it mean as an adolescent approaching this fantastical looming milestone and what does it mean as a middle aged 40 something looking back on a quarter century passed. In an era that became obsessed by memorialising this numerical change of the calendar, it is only with the benefit of hindsight can we see what it all added up to. The artist appears as the film’s protagonist/broadcaster with the backdrop of various examples of millennium architectural projects as he proposes an elaborate treatise on what “The Millennium” means today. The film explores the various incidents, influences and ephemera of the time that created a picture, particularly, of the male psyche such as Fight Club, Woodstock ’99, Columbine, Eminem, the Nail Bomber, Jackass etc, as part of the artist’s ongoing investigations into masculine identities and subcultures.

About

Guy Oliver (b.1982) lives and works in Margate. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London (MA Painting) in 2015. He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2021 and received the Jerwood/Film & Video Umbrella Award 2020. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include: ‘Interiority Complex’, Quench Gallery, Margate (2023); ‘We Put The Unction Into Erectile Dysfunction’, Brooke Benington, London (2022); and ‘Hindsight’, Jerwood Space, London (2020).