Vanessa Beecroft’s infuriating adoption quest makes her a tortured artist at heart. By THOMASIN SLEIGH.

AT ONE STAGE in The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins artist Vanessa Beecroft turns to the camera and says “I feel bad for the father, I feel like I’m stealing his children”. “Well yes Vanessa,” I said aloud, “that’s because you are.” This documentary, directed by New Zealander Pietra Brettkelly, follows Beecroft while she is in Sudan photographing her latest body of work and attempting to get together the paperwork together to adopt Sudanese ‘orphan’ twins. Beecroft would have you believe that they are ‘orphans’ in desperate need of her motherly care, but it turns out they have a father. And Sudanese tradition dictates that on the death of their mother the children should be looked after by their extended family – which they have plenty of. The ‘orphan’ idea is just one of the delusions Beecroft constructs for herself.

Vanessa Beecroft is an internationally famous artist. Her most well known works are performative installations of groups of semi-naked women in gallery spaces. She is very well regarded, she has lots of admirers, she has lots of money, she can go around exploiting Sudanese people if she wants to. And she does.

Intelligently paced and edited, Brettkelly has conducted interviews with Beecroft’s mother, father (who is a total nutbar), husband and a number of art world people in an attempt to construct a portrait of Beecroft and also perhaps explain why she behaves in such an egotistical and cavalier manner.

In Beecroft, Brettkelly found a fascinating subject. She is self-absorbed and unpredictable whilst also articulate and compassionate. She is obsessively dedicated to her plight at adoption to the exclusion of all those around her, including her husband who she doesn’t inform of her plan until it is well underway.

The documentary raises a lot of interesting issues – the relationship between western art practice and the third world, what ‘privilege’ actually means and how it is measured, and the recent fad for celebrities adopting ‘dispossessed’ children. This movie questions the assumption that these children will be better off or happier in the first world. At one stage Beecroft’s husband, who seems to be a considered and intelligent person, says “just because they [the Sudanese] don’t know the certain things we call luxuries it doesn’t mean that we’re better than them.” A very apt (if obvious) statement and one that perhaps he should have been sharing with his wife.

In The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins Brettkelly does not try to over-simplify the story but instead manages to show that Beecroft is a complicated person and these are complicated issues. Through deft editing Beecroft’s moments of gross cultural insensitivity are countered by a genuine sympathy and desire to do good. The film is also a welcome alternative to the tabloid style journalism that follows the likes of Anjelina Jolie and Madonna and reifies their adoption of children from the third world. Brettkelly is barely present in the film, and in her opened ended and fluid style she offers the audience the opportunity to give these controversial and pertinent issues the consideration they deserve.