Throughout 2016, I’ve been trying to respond to artwork about landscape in more ways than simply essays. I found that in trying convey work that I liked, there was only so far I could go with conventional journalistic and essay writing. At the tail-end of each response article, I’ve been sneaking in a poem about the work and its themes so thought it would be … Continue reading Responses: Poems On Landscape and Melancholy
Above is the trailer for my final short of the year, a film detailing an event in the life of the poet and writer, Edward Thomas. I’ve had a personal fascination with Thomas for a few years now, properly diving into his work early last year and finding much in common with both his mentality and his style of writing. The film is based loosely … Continue reading Trailer – The Attempt (Edward Thomas)
When recently interviewing the writer and filmmaker, John Rogers, the setting of our meeting place in Stratford played heavily upon my mind. Such was the contrast between so many of the buildings and spaces within the area that many ideas came about just from a quick meander around its many new developments. Because of this we agreed to reconvene at the place a few weeks … Continue reading Wanders: Planet Stratford with John Rogers (London).
I have been lucky enough to have this year’s Halloween film, No Diggin’ Here – a film about M.R. James, Aldeburgh and A Warning To The Curious – premiered on the BFI’s website. It was a Halloween treat that, until I saw it happen in full, I didn’t quite believe, but I count myself incredibly lucky for such an opportunity. A few weeks back, the … Continue reading Short Film – No Diggin’ Here.
This presentation was originally given at the Folk Horror Revival day at The British Museum (16/02/2016). My thanks to the fellow admins of the Folk Horror Revival, especially Jim Peters and Andy Paciorek. There’s an overt connection between analogue technology and the narratives surrounding paranormal activity in British horror, especially when made during the 1970s. No doubt there are connections between the interest in such … Continue reading The Ghost In The Grain: Analogue Hauntings of the 1970s
The Neolithic town of Avebury in Wiltshire has figured in much that I love for a growing number of years now. Its draw has been one that has crossed all areas of the arts that dominate my current interests, to the point where the village almost seemed to embody a fictional realm akin to Alan Garner’s Elidor or Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It had become a … Continue reading Dérives: A Journey To Avebury.
The photography series, Areas Of Outstanding Natural Beauty (1982-1984), was the first work I came across by Keith Arnatt. This was some time before he would eventually be back in vogue thanks to Tate Britain’s well received conceptual exhibition, of which his most famous work, Self Burial (1969), was the publicity image for. Very much like the landscapes that so much of Arnatt’s work captures, … Continue reading Responses: Keith Arnatt’s A.O.N.B (1982-1984).
There are few writers that figure more prominently in everything I do than the teller of beautiful Edwardian ghost stories, M.R. James. Alongside W.G. Sebald, J.G. Ballard, Alan Garner and Virginia Woolf, his writing holds a great power over me with its familiar yet unfamiliar worlds. His writing preys upon my mind at regular intervals, even outside of the Christmas period from which they were … Continue reading Trailer – No Diggin’ Here.
John Rogers has been one of the most prominent psychogeographical writers and filmmakers of the last decade. Fiercely independent and with a strong DIY sensibility towards his creative responses to London, his work is a vital component and documentation of a city still in a phase of hyper-development and gentrification. Ahead of his adaptation/response to Iain Sinclair’s most recent book, London Overground, I met up … Continue reading Interview: John Rogers on London Overground and Psychogeography.
I remember being sat on a bench on Dunwich Heath in September last year and seeing the dome of Sizewell B for the first time as an adult. I had just walked a little way down the coast, after a day of filming further down at Orford Ness, from Dunwich beach through to the heath. I simply was not expecting to be greeted by such … Continue reading Short Film – Heavy Water.
Celluloid Wicker Man 