I have never seen Barry Flanagan’s short video piece, Hole In the Sea (1969), yet I’m not quite sure if I ever quite want to. The short piece, filmed by Flanagan with Gerry Schum in Holland for a Land Art TV exhibition, currently exists in colour and in black & white, contained variously in the Pompidou archive in Paris and the Stedelick Museum in Amsterdam. … Continue reading Responses: Hole In The Sea (1969, 1970), Barry Flanagan
Photos from Andrew Bartram‘s Fenland series. The memory of a day from the my childhood returned to my thoughts recently. It was born of the colour orange, the feeling of sunlight upon my face and memories of my father. Forever being hoisted from the comfort of my house into varied, arid stretches of land in search of animalistic treasure, the day in question was a … Continue reading Fictions: Whixall Moss
One of Derek Jarman’s first short super-8 film was the haunting A Journey to Avebury. Early evidence that Jarman was interested in the genii loci of English landscapes, his walk through the Wiltshire landscape, after the intense stint of work on the sets for Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), had a larger influence upon him than the singular short film belies. The ancient landscape generated a whole range minimalist paintings … Continue reading Responses: Derek Jarman’s Avebury
When Jeremy Deller took control of the UK’s pavilion in the 2013 Venice Biennale, the press coverage caught hold of one specific aspect that the artist discussed; its “aggressiveness”. With environmental concern sat at the heart of the exhibition, alongside the general political upheaval caused by the coalition government during its third year of power, it’s unsurprising to find Deller’s work channelling some form of … Continue reading Responses: Jeremy Deller’s A Good Day For Cyclists (2013)
Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. – Rebecca Solnit Late last year, I watched two films back-to-back that effectively spoke of one very particular theme. Viewing Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) followed by Dennis Hopper’s directorial debut The Last Movie (1971) highlighted a number of unavoidable connections between the films. Both films … Continue reading Sex and the Landscape
I was initially struggling to put together a showreel for 2016. I don’t think my film work has ever been so reliant on its varied soundworlds for their full context and so pulling the strongest images out of that context doesn’t quite work. I’ve tried my best to make something vaguely cohesive from these moments though, looking back at the five films I’ve made this … Continue reading Showreel 2016
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)
At the recent Alchemical Landscape conference in Cambridge, there was some interesting discussion of the landscape seen in the opening segment of Alan Clarke and David Rudkin’s Play for Today episode, Penda’s Fen (1974). The point of the discussion was to show the subversive nature of the opening titles of the film in regards to its melding of two potentially differing realities of English landscape. … Continue reading Wire and Grass Landscapes
“My mother lives in the windy Orkney Islands. It’s certainly a wonderful place to be brought up in.” In making a short film about her mother, Scottish experimental filmmaker Margaret Tait also explored the interesting relationship between place and youth. In A Portrait of Ga (1952), a 4 minute short film shot on 16mm with a voice-over by the filmmaker, a fragment of biography becomes … Continue reading Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)
Celluloid Wicker Man 