Viewing articles tagged with 'Film'

LUX Scotland, online

Artist Moving Image Festival 2021: GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW

Established in 2012, LUX Scotland and Tramway's Artist Moving Image Festival has a reputation for engendering exciting and challenging new discourses surrounding artists' film and moving image. Previous iterations have been curated by artists such as Ima-Abasi Okon, Emmie McLuskey, Mark Briggs and Naomi Pearce, and the 2021 festival is no different, led by artists Adam Benmakhlouf and Tako Taal, who share a commitment to countering the structures of colonialism and white supremacy through their work. Typically taking place over a weekend, this iteration of the festival will unfold, instead, over the course of a year, with a welcome and considered slowness. Review by Amy Jones

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Maureen Paley, 60 Three Colts Ln, London E2 6GQ

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Once Removed

Abu Hamdan’s film ‘Once Removed’ (2019) suggests the experience of transgenerational memory might be employed as a method of re-processing history and gathering together fragments of the obscured past through a more empathetic lens. Presented as a split screen video where the artist and his interviewee converse as silhouettes in front of two large projections, this work exists on multiple levels. Review by Gabriella Sonabend

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Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock St, Portland, OR 97212, United States

Interview with Carlos Motta: We Got Each Other’s Back

Three stage settings topped with multiple videos stretch across the expanse of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, featuring the autoethnographies of Heldáy de la Cruz, Julio Salgado, and Edna Vázquez, all in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Carlos Motta. Motta generously and pointedly answered queries I prompted for this collective project and how it articulates personal counter-narratives through its form in addition to its relation to Motta’s previous works that query the socio-political conditions of marginalised communities, their enmeshed ethical stakes, and the deep affective bonds that they invoke. Interview with Laurel V. McLaughlin

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Like A Little Disaster, Online

The eye can see things the arm cannot reach

Before the pandemic, Julie Grosche and the collective Like A Little Disaster (founded in 2014 by Giuseppe Pinto and Paolo Modugno) had organised a large group exhibition to take place in a 17th century church in Polignano a Mare, a beautiful town on the coast of southern Italy. Once Italy entered lockdown, the curatorial team reconfigured the show as an online exhibition and I’m glad to say that their commitment has paid off handsomely – ‘the eye can see things the arm cannot reach’, presented by the website Sajetta, is a thrilling cocktail of contemporary video work. Review by Tom Lordan

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Primary, 33 Seely Road, Nottingham, NG7 1NU, United Kingdom

Rebecca Lennon: LIQUID i

Installed in the generous space of the assembly hall of a former school building, the six-channel sound and three-channel video work lures the viewer into a cacophonic whirl of multiple layers and intertwining currents. The artwork induces a vertiginous split-attention effect—a poetic response to the present condition, which is often characterised by contemporary philosophers as liquid, ever changing and precarious in its instability. Review by Jaroslava Tomanova

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Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Rd, Bow, London E3 5QZ

Thao Nguyen Phan: Becoming Alluvium

Thao Nguyen Phan’s film ‘Becoming Alluvium’ (2019) is caught in the crosscurrents of serenity and ferocity, beauty and harsh reality. In this video work, Phan’s ongoing research surrounding the Mekong River is experienced through fictional narratives, woven together with themes of local folklore, ecological concern, South East Asian industrialisation and the fanning Mekong River itself. Alive and lively, this mineral-stained river is shot from the shoreline, from above and from the water, creating a poetic language that envelopes the audience, sweeping us away for the sixteen minutes of the film’s duration. Review by Nina Hanz

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Online, Big Screen Southend and Focal Point Gallery, Elmer Ave, Southend-on-Sea SS1 1NB

To Dream Effectively

Effective dreams are dreams that can change the world. ‘To Dream Effectively’ at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea is a group show based upon the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin, bringing together alternative narratives for the future of our planet, both online, within the gallery, and upon Big Screen Southend. Review by Elliot Warren Gibbons

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Online

Plicnik Space Initiative

The Plicnik Space Initiative, a new artistic venture founded by Amelie Mckee and Melle Nieling, hosts its inaugural exhibition aboard the D02.2, a fictional spacecraft of massive proportions, with a mission to explore the boundary between physical and virtual space. As museums and galleries across the globe face uncertain futures in the wake of the pandemic, the show interrogates the parameters of digital curation, inviting imaginative responses to a range of pressing questions concerning art and the environment, technology, and commerce. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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Online

Film London Jarman Award 2020

The six shortlisted works for the 2020 Film London Jarman Award are thought-provoking, exquisitely produced films that are markedly diverse and address concerns, in different documentary-style formats, that are at the forefront of social consciousness. They showcase the best in contemporary artists’ filmmaking and are being taken on a virtual tour to venues across the UK from 24 September to 19 November 2020. A prominent theme in the shortlist concerns archaeology, made manifest in the evaluation of the past or the uncovering of layers. Review by Rina Arya

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Forma Arts and Media, Peveril House, London, SE1 4TD

Interview with Alberta Whittle: ‘RESET’

Alberta Whittle’s new moving image work ‘RESET’ (2020) was awarded the 2020 Frieze Artist Award. Filmed across the artist’s native Barbados, as well as South Africa and the United Kingdom, it charts a polyphonic journey, woven together through contributions by writers, performers, and musicians, who Whittle refers to as her accomplices. ‘RESET’ is steeped in postcolonial and queer theory, informing Whittle’s process, which is also a form of protest: the work addresses contagion, xenophobia and their colonial entanglements, while exploring healing and meditation as forms of resistance. To reset, by Whittle’s terms, is not only to wipe the slate clean, but also to create a new de-colonial language: aural and written, embodied and spiritual, made up of multiple diasporic alliances. Interview by Inês Geraldes Cardoso

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Towner Eastbourne, Devonshire Park College Road Eastbourne BN21 4JJ

Towner International 2020

A new biennial exhibition, with a £10,000 prize, features 24 artists selected from an open call by art world heavy weights: Polly Staple (Director of Collections, British Art, Tate), Turner Prize nominee Mike Nelson and Towner’s own Curator, Noelle Collins. There’s a lot of good things to be said about Towner International, Towner Gallery’s new biennial exhibition. It celebrates artists in the vicinity of Towner’s East Sussex location—10 have been chosen from Sussex, nearby Kent and Hampshire, 10 from elsewhere across the UK and 4 from international locations. Review by Kirsty White

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Jerwood Arts, 171 Union Street, London SE1 0LN

Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020: Interview with Reman Sadani

As Reman Sadani's film 'Walkout 1' premieres at Jerwood Arts, Anneka French sat down with the artist, one of the winners of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020, to discuss her new work and the impact the award has had upon her practice. Interview by Anneka French

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Jerwood Arts, 171 Union Street, London SE1 0LN

Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020: Interview with Guy Oliver

Ahead of the presentation of his newly commissioned film, 'You Know Nothing of My Work', at Jerwood Arts this autumn, Anneka French sat down with artist Guy Oliver—one of the recipients of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2020. Interview by Anneka French

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Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG

Sophie Cundale: The Near Room

Sophie Cundale’s new film commission ‘The Near Room’ (2020) is an absurd psychological melodrama about loss and the aftermath. The film as a whole asks, but doesn’t answer the question of how we make sense of experiences in flux, like ecstasy or crisis. In unfathomable times, when death feels closer to life than ever, this film is an unsettling watch. Review by Andrew Price

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