Motion in Form

The first in the series:

MOTION IN FORM  

EΛIONI

Oliver Bancroft presents an installation of multi-screen film projections and photography entitled EΛIONI.

A connection to history and narrative are recurring themes in Bancroft's work. His paintings enjoy and wrestle with the weight of art history, while his films engage with the passing moment to address what remains of the past. The subjects of his films are diverse; the travels of an island donkey, a carnivorous butterfly, a song and its singer, a physical encounter at a doctor's surgery. His enjoyment of analogue film has resulted in various forms of presenting film, from single-screen cinematic presentation to gallery and site-specific installations.

EΛIONI (El-ee-o-nee) is a body of work created through engaging with and responding to an olive grove on the Greek island of Aegina. This olive grove, said to be the oldest in Europe, is older than any archaeological remains found in Greek soil. An olive grove existence is completely dependent on people maintaining the trees for the cultivation of its fruit. Unlike the countries many ruins and remains it serves the same purpose now as it did then. The landscape has a 'biblical' presence, its monumental passage through time is present and at the same time incomprehensible. How can one relate to something so vast? The works are in attempts at making historic document, a topographical record of the Elioni olive grove.

FLOOD

‘The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,


The furrow followed free;


We were the first that ever burst


Into that silent sea.’

(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798)

 The programme explores our physical and spiritual relationship with the sea, from gazing at the distant horizon to the bodily motion of swimming, it also takes a dip into the darker aspects of total submergence.


Selected by Louise Colbourne for the Jerwood Gallery June 2013

Analogue Recurring

BIG SCREEN & FILM GALLERY 2013

The Big Screen and Film Gallery offers the opportunity to experience an exciting selection of work by artists, film makers and musicians.This year’s line up focuses on the more radical movements within moving-image, sound and music. Including live performances of expanded cinema and newly commissioned, experimental art & music collaborations. 

Live acts include DJ’s with their own style of audio-visual anarchy, from dance music innovator Phil Hartnoll (Orbital) to the legendary ‘Rebel Dread’ Don Letts. Also performing an improvised mix of sound and moving image will be:DR Das of Asian Dub Foundation (TBC) and resident DJ Harry K. Plus Paul Burgess will be screening and playing selections from his Punk and Reggae archive.

We present the very best of innovating video artists, film makers and sound artists, to include a selection from Unconcious Archives: an audio-visual, expanded cinema collective that transverse noise core and vision spectacle by James Holcombe & Sally Fielding, featuring Greg Pope.

There will also be a performance to light up the woodland area by the internationally acclaimed artist Ruth Proctor.

The programme of screenings will include works by: Cathy Sisler, Henry Hills, James Richards & Steve Reinke, Jeff Keen, Dara Birnbaum, Ian Helliwell, Marcus Coates, Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, The Otolith Group, Crass, Liz Rhodes, Joan Jonus, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Jim Hobbs amongst many others…
July 18-21st 2013

http://bigscreen-filmgallery.tumblr.com/

One Hundred Foot in New York

Jim Hobbs has another update for the ONE HUNDRED FOOT screenings - it will be shown in new york this friday, april 5th.  it will be presented by an arts/film organization called Mono No Aware, and he will be there to project the films and do a q & a after the event. 

http://mononoawarefilm.com/special-engagements/one-hundred-foot-2013/

ONE HUNDRED FOOT film screening was also held on March 28th at Milton Keynes Gallery.  

http://www.mkgallery.org/events/2013_03_28/One_hundred_foot/

I Know what You did Last Summer

Maxa Zoller returns from Cairo to host an evening of films made by the participants of last year's no.w.here summer school 'A Lecture From Behind the Screen'. 

Anthropological, game-based, collective & criminal filmmaking, and more information about the no.w.here summer school 2013: Forcible Frames awaits you at this free and informal event. 

Featuring works by: 

Mei Homma 
Ruth Proctor 
Andrey Shental Sigríður Tulinius 
Piotr Krzymowski 
Ariane Monier 
Matthias Kispert 
Louise Colbourne 
Grace Harrison 
Daniella Russo 

http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index.php?cat=1&subCat=docdetail&&id=356
http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index.php?cat=1&subCat=docdetail&&id=346

Electro Studios Project Space Open

New artist-run project space in St Leonards on Sea

http://www.electrostudiosprojectspace.co.uk

Jarman Award

Hold Your Ground 2012 by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler was screened as part of the line-up at the Jarman Award day held at the Whitechapel gallery on the 3rd Nov. I didn't manage to see all that was on offer, as there two separate sites to the days talks and screening but was glad to catch Karen Mirza and Brad Butler's talk about there new film Deep State 2012.

I would like to have seen Benedict Drew talk about his work and thought the screening set-up didn't do his work justice.

Marcus Coates film Vision Quest - A Ritual for Elephant & Castle 2012 was one of the strangest films, I enjoyed the mix of tension, politics and humour but wondered if it were a little too much like an kind of extended Ali-G sketch!

James Richards video Disambiguation 2012 was a sensual over-load. The free association of random film and video clips with the addition of accompanying sound-tracks and music was cleverly done although it was a lot to take in one sitting. There were a few porn clips, to include at least 2 of male ejaculation which added an edgyness to the screening and made me ponder weather this young artist may win the award!...He did win the award but it would have been great to see the radical act of this award going to artists like Karen and Brad who's practice reaches far and wide beyond the final commodity of the artwork (as I'm sure Jarman himself would also of found attributable)

Juliana Cerqueira Leite

The Juliana Cerqueira Leite exhibition at TJ Boulting was a great opportunity to see some of the Brooklyn based artists work. The large sculptural pieces had been made in London specially for the show and others had been bought over from Brooklyn, making a nice link between the two locations that she has inhabited over the last 10 years. 

Surrounding the sculptures in the show at TJ Boulting were a series of large cyanotypes called ‘Summertime Blues’, which had been made in mid-summer on Brooklyn rooftop. The prints are made up of multiple exposures of the artists naked body, where a series of mirrored poses were struck on the light-sensitive fabric. 
'The evidence of the summer heat is captured in the starburst forms produced by dripping sweat. The final image is therefore a composite, generating a new anatomy, an impossible body, made feasible by the mechanics of directly capturing time'. 

Also I have added some of Juliana's thoughts in response to her performance for the SOLO exhibition on this post:

http://soloexhibition.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/solo.html

'Solo' Exhibition

....All the moving image works in the SOLO show were playing at once. A chorus of teetering, grappling, pacing, hobbling, heaving, weaving, spinning, pressing and fingering was accompanied by the constant whirring of the 16mm projectors and the sounds of the various actions. Not all of the works included sound and there was no dialogue in any of the works shown. The absence of dialogue was a conscious decision to bring about more of an experiential interaction with the work, to bring us closer to an empathy with the defiant, dogged determination and a self-will that the artists employed in these individually performed tasks. Through the sounds and actions, some hugely arduous and others slight, all played in unison, we were also bought closer to understanding or even touching the very fabric of the works. Many of which are punctuated with moments of vulnerability when things do not quite go to plan and something slips, misses the target or breaks.. .

SOLO exhibition

This exhibition focuses on the work of nine women artists who primarily work in film, video and performance. They are all present in the work immersed in a solo reverie, acting out tasks and actions that range from the very bodily and visceral to the banal and distant. 
There is a connectivity between the works on display together due to the earnest endeavours and intimate obsessions of the artists and their shared engrossment in the materials they wield, whittle or balance.

Big Screen and Film Gallery at Latitude

It was a great success. We had an audience of art enthusiasts and interested passers by who came to see what was going on at this relatively ‘underground’ event in the woods at the festival. The word soon spread that this was an event not to miss.

During the day the Film Gallery show-cased experimental expanded cinema by James Holcombe, Adam Asnan, Zoe Brown, Jim Hobbs and Rie Nakajima and Nick Collins. These live performances were mostly improvised  and transformed the normally quiet retreat of the gallery space into more of an audio-visual workshop. The events worked well in the chapel-like gallery situated next to the big screen in the woods, the intimate nature of the space concentrated the intensity of the activities within it. The audience enjoyed being able to get close to the work and experience the mechanisms of the analogue apparatus.

All the videos shown on the Big Screen at dusk and into the night looked amazing, there were beautiful, thought provoking, mesmerising and amusing pieces by Saskia Olde Wolbers, Sebastian Buerkner, Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, David Blandy, Benedict Drew, Semiconductor, Vicki Thornton, Graham dolphin and the late great Jeff Kean, to name a few.

Although The Big Screen had less publicity than some other, more established events, we still managed to draw a good crowd and as the night progressed the Dj’s and Vj’s attracted even more people and with the combination of a cinematic screen and good sound system we ended up with a full-on rave! This was all down to the excellent work of David Wilson, Dennis (DJ) McNanny (all the way from Brooklyn), the legendary Don Letts and the resident DJ Harry K. 

Also, this was all possible because of excellent technical assistance from two lovely, helpful, down to earth and good humoured assistants Emily Ballard and Alex Duckworth.