At a time of chronic and abject conformity (when even the BBC publishes guidelines on how to be innovative), and when for some inconceivable reason, women earn a fraction of what their male counterparts earn, it was very refreshing to attend an inspired screening of artists’ films at the continuously innovative Hundred Years Gallery, part of its As-it-Stands season.
(And this happens at a time when I was seriously considering organising collective screamings somewhere, to counter the lack of screenings).
http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/as-it-stands-screenings/
Four films (two by two artists) stood out for me, memorably:
- A dead flower reanimates by Paula Garcia Stone.
A dance-like sequence of the artist’s drawings of a flower. Its transformations powerfully evoke human states of mind and body, and also present surprising forms that aren’t normally noticed, amidst the grit and grind of the everyday.
- Drumming About Architecture by Nick Cash.
In his film about the vast St Peter’s Seminary, Nick Cash literally performs this marvellous but crumbling building, mostly with wire brushes and a cymbal, dragging and dropping them, drumming on its varied surfaces to bring the decaying building rhythmically alive again. The film includes statements from Isi Metzstein, who along with Andy Macmillan, were the architects who designed St Peter’s Seminary.*
- Dreaming track by Paula Garcia Stone.
I have no idea how this magical and hypnotic film was made, which heightens its evocative power. It features drawings of freight trains, which glide past and interact with drawings of trackside trees. Here is how the artist describes what inspired it:
‘Sounds enter the ears and images float out with the breath. Strangely, this intermittent interruption of the approaching and then gliding freight trains makes a huge musical and soothing contribution to sleep. The heaving mixes in with deep breathing, the clanking of the wheels on the track, metal on metal, highlights the dramas of a dream not remembered’.
www.paulagarciastone.com
- Craft v. Craft by Nick Cash.
In this delightful well-observed film we see various encounters which the artist experiences, as he paddles his colourfully collaged cardboard and paper boat on the Grand Union Canal, from its urban London surroundings right through to lush greenery, kilometres later. He is overtaken by a fast paddler in a glossy canoe; a cyclist reads his texts, peddling near the water’s edge; a swan slowly paddles past, looking straight ahead. Then, once the intrepid artist is at a safe distance, the swan turns its head and looks round at him, watching him as he paddles away in his precarious-looking little boat, the swan probably wondering ‘well, what the hell is going on there then?’, in its own language.
www.thenickcash.com
*Metzstein set up the Macallan Club (the Macallan was his favourite whisky) for architects who had suffered the demolition or neglect of their work, inevitably an extremely depressing part of an architect’s life. He also taught at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, where his colleague and friend was the equally charismatic Director of the School, Andy Macmillan. For the infamous Research Assessment Exercise, Macmillan (who loathed academic bureaucracy) in 1992 tellingly submitted, as his research evidence, a T-shirt from a conference he’d attended.
(And this happens at a time when I was seriously considering organising collective screamings somewhere, to counter the lack of screenings).
http://hundredyearsgallery.co.uk/as-it-stands-screenings/
Four films (two by two artists) stood out for me, memorably:
- A dead flower reanimates by Paula Garcia Stone.
A dance-like sequence of the artist’s drawings of a flower. Its transformations powerfully evoke human states of mind and body, and also present surprising forms that aren’t normally noticed, amidst the grit and grind of the everyday.
- Drumming About Architecture by Nick Cash.
In his film about the vast St Peter’s Seminary, Nick Cash literally performs this marvellous but crumbling building, mostly with wire brushes and a cymbal, dragging and dropping them, drumming on its varied surfaces to bring the decaying building rhythmically alive again. The film includes statements from Isi Metzstein, who along with Andy Macmillan, were the architects who designed St Peter’s Seminary.*
- Dreaming track by Paula Garcia Stone.
I have no idea how this magical and hypnotic film was made, which heightens its evocative power. It features drawings of freight trains, which glide past and interact with drawings of trackside trees. Here is how the artist describes what inspired it:
‘Sounds enter the ears and images float out with the breath. Strangely, this intermittent interruption of the approaching and then gliding freight trains makes a huge musical and soothing contribution to sleep. The heaving mixes in with deep breathing, the clanking of the wheels on the track, metal on metal, highlights the dramas of a dream not remembered’.
www.paulagarciastone.com
- Craft v. Craft by Nick Cash.
In this delightful well-observed film we see various encounters which the artist experiences, as he paddles his colourfully collaged cardboard and paper boat on the Grand Union Canal, from its urban London surroundings right through to lush greenery, kilometres later. He is overtaken by a fast paddler in a glossy canoe; a cyclist reads his texts, peddling near the water’s edge; a swan slowly paddles past, looking straight ahead. Then, once the intrepid artist is at a safe distance, the swan turns its head and looks round at him, watching him as he paddles away in his precarious-looking little boat, the swan probably wondering ‘well, what the hell is going on there then?’, in its own language.
www.thenickcash.com
*Metzstein set up the Macallan Club (the Macallan was his favourite whisky) for architects who had suffered the demolition or neglect of their work, inevitably an extremely depressing part of an architect’s life. He also taught at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, where his colleague and friend was the equally charismatic Director of the School, Andy Macmillan. For the infamous Research Assessment Exercise, Macmillan (who loathed academic bureaucracy) in 1992 tellingly submitted, as his research evidence, a T-shirt from a conference he’d attended.