ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
There is something fundamental and deeply affecting at the heart of mankind’s relationship to the elements. What might happen in our moments of physical and psychological encounter? Three high-class housewives escape to an Icelandic snow cap, we take a walk along the paved earth of New Kent road, meditating upon the enshrouding and enshrouded earth, a narrative on death. A man takes a sensory journey through the nature of the earth’s surface. We experience a shocking encounter between worm, snail and human, while the banality of a plastic bag is elevated in an elemental ritual of sweeping. A time-lapse in a paddy-field invokes us to share in the shifting elemental forces of a day’s progress.
Saturday 22nd October, 11am, Tower Mill
Running time: 1h2m
Tickets: £4
Aboriginal Myths of South London
Directed by: Steven Ball
Running time: 00:10:27
Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Aboriginal Myths of South London adapts world views associated with indigenous people of Oceania to an interpretation of the space and social history of places in South London. As the first manifestation of the project, this video is presented as its prelude and explores New Kent Road, a major road close to the artist’s home. This application of attitudes to the status of the dead and human relationship to the ground, becomes a materialist alternative to the concept of the genius loci and the familiar. The approach is measured and austere, employing an arrangement of animated photographs and voice texts that becomes a poetic essay.
Biography:
Steven Ball has worked in film, video, sound and installation since the early 1980s. In the late 1980s he accidentally migrated to Melbourne, Australia. There he continued his practice making a number of film, video and sound and installation works, as well as being engaged in various curatorial, administrative, teaching and writing activities. Since returning to the UK in 2000 he has worked predominantly with digital video, producing a series of works, which among other things, are particularly concerned with digital material processes and spatial representation. More recently he has been developing these concerns through collaborative live video performance. He is currently Research Fellow at the British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.
Artist's website: http://www.steven-ball.net
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Dynasty
Directed by: The Icelandic Love Corporation
Running time: 00:13:00
Year: 2007
Country: Iceland
Synopsis:
We dam rivers to create electricity. Global warming is causing a confusion in our waters. Could it happen that hydro power stations will no longer supply us with electricity? What does the modern high-class housewife do when electricity is gone? In this project (photographs and video) The Icelandic Love Corporation takes on the roles of three high-class housewives, who have escaped from their safe town houses to enjoy the last moments on one of the Earths last snow caps. They are dressed in their warmest furs, hunt fish and birds for food, sit by the fire and sing, crochet and contemplate. Their phones do not work, lap tops are long gone. This is a luxury and a privilege, since most other places are sweltering hot. Shot on location in the Icelandic highland. The atmosphere is a strange mix of realism and surrealism. There is a focus on small details in contrast with the vastness of the landscape. Such as a stroke of cool breath coming from a mouth with closely painted red lips. The video presents long quiet scenes in the magical light of the Icelandic Mid Winter day. The ladies faces express calmness and fulfilment. A smile occasionally emerges as they appreciate their luck. They go on with their routines in a stoical way. What else is there to do?
Biography:
The Icelandic Love Corporation is a group of three artists: Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (1973), Jóní Jónsdóttir (1972) and Eirún Sigurdardóttir (1971). (Dora Isleifsdottir (1970) joined the ILC in 1996 and left in 2001.)
They graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1996. Since then they have lived and studied in New York, Berlin and Copenhagen and are currently based in Reykjavik.
Artist's website: http://www.ilc.is
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Field Work
Directed by: Alastair Cook
Running time: 00:07:05
Year: 2011
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
"Changes started on a day with a lamb’s coat sky.
I walked the riverbank in the scent of ramsons,
catkins on the birches. Water poured past
in near silence, gravity pulling it
to the Tay, and the sea’s endless reservoir."
Field Notes is a filmpoem by Alastair Cook of a commissioned narrative by East Lothian Makar and publisher Colin Will with sound by Italian composer Luca Nasciuti. Field Notes draws together landscape and the four elements within the context of one life.
Biography:
Alastair is a lens-based artist working in fine art photography, portraiture and film. His award winning film and photographic work is driven by his knowledge, skill and experience as a conservation architect: my work is rooted in place and the intrinsic connections between people, land and the sea. Alastair trained at the Glasgow School of Art then fled the country, returning after a dutiful spell in London and a more relaxed time in Amsterdam; he now lives and works in Edinburgh.
"A thoughtful and smart exhibition, the photographs in Analogue Decay are beguiling and breathtaking."
Colin Herd, Aesthetica Magazine, April 2011.
"Alastair Cook's films are beautiful."
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, August 2011.
Artist's website: http://alastaircook.com
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Fleet.Miscue
Directed by: The Olivers: Dickens and Lewis
Running time: 00:08:39
Year: 2009
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
A lone being struggles through forest, bog, and heath; exploring a catalogue of sensory experiences. Later, on a far off shore a figure strides beneath towering industry; tends crops, gathers materials, drifts on. A shrouded cataclysm lies at the core - an untamed fire, consuming this world from the inside out.
Biography:
The Olivers graduated from Film and Video: Theory and Production at the University of East London in 2009. Though they work separately, their collaborative work is perhaps the most defined. Dickens and Lewis are currently working on an episodic moving-image work, which intends to expand and rethink many ideas started in Fleet.Miscue. The project will be an investigation into, storytelling & myth-making, ritual & tradition, Empire & collective memory; and will be predominantly improvised within a harsh natural landscape, at the mercy of all the elements.
Dickens: www.rotten-tropics.com
Lewis: www.spiresinthefog.com
Artist's website: http://rotten-tropics.com
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Gralloch
Directed by: Henry Coombes
Running time: 00:05:00
Year: 2007
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Inspired by Victorian landscape paintings of the Scottish Highlands, Gralloch is a canvas that comes to life, depicting the kill of a stag by a deerstalker.
Biography:
Henry Coombes works across the mediums of film, painting and sculpture. Coombes studied at St. Martin's College of Art, London and Glasgow School of Art, graduated in 2002. Previous exhibitions include the 52nd Venice Biennale, Scottish National Galleries Edinburgh and the Liste Art Fair in Basel. His third short film The Bedfords (2009) was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland award. Coombes is currently developing his debut feature film Little Dog Boy. He lives and works in Glasgow.
Filmography:
Magic Towards Your Face (2010)
The Bedfords (2009)
Gralloch (2007)
Laddy and the Lady (2005).
Artist's website: http://www.brocken-spectre.com
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Loam
Directed by: Ashley Nieuwenhuizen
Running time: 00:07:00
Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
Made up of two parts, Loam (2010) illustrates a carefully composed juxtaposition of animal and human. On a layer of moss, a collection of snails slowly move around; their subtle actions revealing a blinking human eye that compliments the movements of the creatures. As motions of both snail and human correspond, so does the awareness of a shared territory between the species; the blinking eye, awakening to its surroundings. As the silvery strands produced by the molluscs increase, glinting over the terrain, the film quietly switches to a fleshy mass; the film's frame exposing a handful of writhing earthworms inside a human mouth. As the creatures gradually untangle themselves from one another, the mouth appears to devour them; an implication of man's consumption of natural environments. Loam cautiously portrays the connections between man and animal, emphasising the importance of an ecological balance that is imperative to the survival of all species.
Biography:
Graduating with a First Class Degree, with Distinction in September 2010 from the Master of Fine Art Programme at Duncan of Jordanstone, Ashley Nieuwenhuizen continues to investigate the fantastical and scientific realms that serve to amalgamate features and aspects of animal and man. She has participated in several group exhibitions internationally and throughout the United Kingdom, including Running Time, The Dean Gallery, Klook Klook, Travelling Gallery, Scotland, New Contemporaries, The Royal Scottish Academy, and her first solo show, In the Absence of Wolves, Sierra Metro.
Nieuwenhuizen has recently been awarded the RSA Residencies for Scotland 2011, by the Royal Scottish Academy, in association with Hospitalfield Trust House, as well as the Visual Artist Grant Award 2011, from Fife Council. She has also been presented with the Sir William Gillies Bequest Award and John Kinross Scholarship, both from the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as the William Sangster Philips Fund and Special Mention for the Masters Programme, both awarded by Duncan of Jordanstone.
Artist's website: http://www.morphbody.weebly.com
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Sweep and Weep, Weep and Sweep, Under, Over, In Out, Away
Directed by: Claudia Borgna
Running time: 00:11:09
Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis:
The film depicts the artist sweeping her surrounding natural envirnment with a broom made out of drtft wood and plastic bags.
Biography:
A Literature graduate from Genoa University Claudia received another BA from London Metropolitan University in Fine Art. Since then she has been exhibiting nationally and internationally. Claudia is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Grant, the Pollock Grant, the RBS Bursary Award as well as the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship Award. Short-listed for the BBC2 documentary: “School of Saatchi” in 2009 and for the British Women Art Prize in 2010 that same year she won of the ‘Public Speaks’ Broomhill NSP.
Artist's website: http://www.claudiaborgna.keepfree.de
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
Tamantirto Timelapse
Directed by: James Cunningham
Running time: 00:06:47
Year: 2010
Country: Indonesia
Synopsis:
In the village of Tamantirto on the outskirts of Yogyakarta, performer James Cunningham moves in and out of stillness in and around a padi field. Sped up at a ratio of 125:1, an 83-minute shoot is condensed into 40 seconds.
Biography:
James Cunningham has choreographed and performed solo and ensemble stage shows, performance-installations, video-dance works and networked/online performances in Australia, Europe, UK, Canada and India. He is an artist with a disability, having permanently paralysed his left arm in a motorbike accident in 92.
He has worked extensively with director and media artist Suzon Fuks, with whom he co-founded the multimedia performance company Igneous, and in 2000 performed with DV8.
In 2008, Igneous’ short dance film Fragmentation, in which he performed and co-choreographed, was a finalist for the Reeldance Award, and their installation performance Mirage was short-listed for an Australian Dance Award.
Artist's website: http://igneous.org.au
Venue: Tower Mill
Screening date: October 22, 2011
Screening time: 11:00
Programme: ELEMENTALS: PRESENCE
