Leigh Bowery, Marina Abramovic, Antony and the Johnsons, Merce Cunningham, John Kelly, Michael Clark and Yvonne Rainer are just a few of the legendary names that have benefited from working with video artist Charles Atlas.

Starting originally with super8, Atlas moved over onto video in the early seventies when he worked on a 'video dance' piece with Merce Cunningham, getting to grips with the then new technology to produce a short film documenting and manipulating a performance from Cunningham’s dance troupe.

As technology has evolved over the past thirty years, Atlas' work has progressed with it. While digital equipment has allowed him to work live, and he continues to push forward how the technology is used, his pieces still manage to maintain the raw and definitely edgy feel of his early films.

Working through the 80's and 90's with figures from the club and performance scenes both in New York and London, the films Atlas made then stand as video works in their own right as well as documentaries of his friends and the scene. It was during this time that he got to know Leigh Bowery, who makes an appearance in a few of Atlas’ performance films. In Mrs Peanut visits New York, a six minute portrait of Leigh in full costume, Bowery walks the streets of New York dressed as his version of the Planters peanut logo Mr Peanut, and Hail The New Puritan, the title of Atlas' upcoming retrospective at Tate Modern, is a collaboration featuring Leigh and dancer Michael Clark.

After Bowery's death, Atlas went on to direct the revealing documentary The Legend of Leigh Bowery. The film gets close to the different sides of Leigh, and shows the lies, the extrovert behaviour, the kindness and the contradictory family background that made him up.

More recently Atlas has been working on Turning, a collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons, combining an intimate performance from the band with a series of video portraits of 13 rotating girls. Filmed and edited live by Atlas, and projected as a backdrop to Antony's soundtrack, the show premiered at the Whitney Biennial New York in 2004 and has been touring Europe this winter.

Charles Atlas has an exhibition of new video works entitled Instant Fame, showing at Vilma Gold on Vyner Street from 22nd November to the 3rd December as well as a series of retrospective screenings of his work from 1975 to 2005 at the Tate Modern Starr Auditorium, 17 – 22 November.