LOCATION: BONINGTON LECTURE THEATRE
Featuring works by, George Barber, Storm De Hirsch, Daina Krumins, Alia Syed
Nottingham based collective Annexinema organise screenings of experimental film and visionary moving image, often in interesting and unusual locations. Recent events have been held in disused shops, medieval churches, and former factories. Programmes are curated thematically and bring together work by well-known experimental filmmakers, contemporary artists, and archival oddities.
For Bonington Film Night #7 Annexinema have selected a series of film works in response to our current exhibition All Men By Nature Desire To Know curated by Joshua Lockwood.
Several of the films will be shown in original 16mm film.
Further reading: http://annexinema.org
A special evening of screenings by artists featured in the Mould Map 6 — Terraformers exhibition and previous Mould Map editions.
Ophiux gives a glimpse into a near future that whilst fictional, is not far from reality and is founded on current scientific research. The work imagines a future in which synthetic biology has been fully realized and applied to both advance human evolution and increase life expectancy, and where human biology has been computer programmed. It not only simulates the collection of data from our own bodies but also the sampling of data from other organisms by a speculative pharmaceutical company: ‘Ophiux’.
To conceive the film, Holder has worked in close collaboration with scientists that she met during her residency at Wysing in 2015 – Dr Marco Galardini, a Computational Biologist at the European Bioinformatics Institute at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge, and Dr Katrin Linse, Senior Biodiversity Biologist at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge.
Ophiux has been co-commissioned by Deptford X where it is set to premiere at their festival in September 2016. It is also being shown as part of a larger project at Wysing Arts Centre from 24 September – 20 November 2016. A tour to other arts and science venues across the UK will be announced at a later date.
The exhibition and film has been made possible with a generous grant from the Arts Council England and in partnership with AND/OR Gallery.
Eschaton is the name of the spaceship that is taking human consciousness to the far reaches of a dying universe. Knowledge and memory are expressed as information from the future. The purpose of this voyage is to deconstruct the fear of infinity. Eschaton’s mission is to survive within death.
Eschaton is the latest film by Copenhagen-based Greek artist and publisher, Stathis Tsemberlidis of cult small press Decadence. Soundtracked by music composed for the film on a modular synth by Panos Alexiadis.
Commissioned by CCA Derry, Bridge Over Troubled Water includes new material filmed across Finland and Lapland that utilises the motif of folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel to explore queer time and climate change anxiety.
This Film Night is in association with the exhibition Mould Map 6 – Terraformers
Bonington Gallery was pleased to present the fifth in the series of Bonington Film Nights. This screening was the last in the season curated by Joshua Lockwood.
This film screening took place amidst the Publishing Rooms exhibition.
Visit the Facebook event page.
Curated by Joshua Lockwood
In association with LUX.
For the fourth screening of this season, Bonington Gallery is pleased to present four films by: Ursula Mayer, Laure Prouvost, Rachel Reupke, and Matthew Richardson.
The selected films explore formal exchange within relationships – whether these are between actors in the films – or directed at us, the viewer.
In Mayer’s film, the ambiguous melodrama continually addresses an ambivalent ‘you’. The indirect narrative adopted by Mayer leaves the viewer left unclear as to who is being addressed; are they referring to each other? Could they be addressing us as the viewer? Perhaps they are talking to themselves?
Comparatively, the ‘you’ in Prouvost’s film seduces the viewer. Offering inviting and pleasant images, which we are shown only briefly. The images are interspersed with a sharp intake of breath, contributing to the creation of a sensory and seductive viewing experience.
In Reupke’s film, a man and woman meet for a drink in several nondescript locations, the same actors playing differing characters. The scenes are drawn out, creating the illusion that we are looking at a 2D image. The lack of action and dialogue within the film is used by Reupke to create a void; into which other emotions can be projected.
Throughout Richardson’s High Definition video, a male protagonist is observed, followed and conversed with, across a variety of quotidian London locations. The video picks up and loses narrative threads amidst an accidental, junk-experience, this is made further ambiguous by the video’s lack of sound. The blurry, yet intimate portrait, begets social documentary or a make-believe fashion shoot, in an illusory location. It could be understood as as a product that unilaterally emerges from fictions of: a social subgroup, a highly self-aware friendship, or a city in its own right.
Image: MATTHEW RICHARDSON, Untitled, 2015, digital still, HD video. Courtesy of the artist.
Curated by Joshua Lockwood
For the third in its series of popular screening events, Bonington Gallery is pleased to present four films by: Benedict Drew, Jacob Dwyer, Matthew Noel-Tod, and Heather Phillipson.
Each of the artists approach the process of filmmaking in differing ways but there are clear and common threads that run between each of the selected films. Each of the artists have used text to deliver and highlight the narrative within their film. Differing speeds of sequences in each film allows intonations of the text; or none in the case of Dwyer’s relentless text – using Spritz technology, which allows viewers to read up to 1,000 words per minute.
The works presented have real and constructed references, actual and virtual landscapes, the overlaying of manufactured imagery, and the production of digital realms – each has a relationship with the developments of technology.
Based in London, his recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Quad Derby (part of the Grand Tour) and at Matt’s Gallery, London. He has shown work in group exhibitions at Island Gallery, Brussels and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Based in Amsterdam, he recently completed a residency at De Ateliers. He currently has an exhibition at C&H Art Space, Amsterdam and has completed a residency with Delta Works in New Orleans.
Based in London, Matthew is currently course leader of Moving Image at University of Brighton. From 2010 – 2015 he was a recipient of the ACME Studios Fire Station Work/Live Programme. He also took-up artist-in-residence in Victoria Park, London with Chisenhale Gallery in 2012.
Based in London, Heathers recent exhibitions include a solo installation at Performa, New York and at Istanbul Biennnial, Turkey. She also has an upcoming exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Curated by Joshua Lockwood
For the second in its series of screening events, Bonington Gallery is pleased to present Time Together by Mark Aerial Waller – a feature length artist film originally commissioned by the Baltic Triennial in 2012.
Time Together, a film in 14 episodes, is set against the luscious backdrop of summertime Lithuania, where a lost woman (Smiltė Bagdžiūnė) is befriended by a stranger (Monika Bičiunaitė) and led through a series of ritual exercises towards the formation of a cult or political cell. The story is deeply mysterious, yet the strangely compelling scenarios, each with a cliffhanger, leave the mind racing. What-if’s on a cosmological scale.
Mark Aerial Waller’s unique films almost come from another dimension, from a position shared with the science fiction and mystery writing of Adolfo Bioy Casares or Philip K Dick.
Time Together was commissioned by the Centre For Contemporary Art Vilnius as part of Midaugas Triennial, The 11th Baltic Triennial Of International Arts with additional funding from The Elephant Trust.
This event has been organised in association with LUX, London.
FILM LENGTH: 72 minutes.
IMAGE:
The original Time Together poster from 2013.
Bonington Film Nights are the latest addition to the Gallery calendar that will punctuate the existing exhibition programme 5 – 6 times a year.
Taking inspiration from the legendary film events that occurred nearly 40 years ago in the Gallery, these screenings will showcase artist films of historical and contemporary importance, frequently collaborating with organisations and individuals from outside the University.
The first season of screenings has been curated by Nottingham-based artist and curator Joshua Lockwood, with the first event focusing on experimental artist films from the 1960s and 1970s.
This event has been organised in association with LUX, London and will feature, Beverly and Tony Conrad, John Latham, Len Lye, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Guy Sherwin and Paul Sharits.
The majority of these films will be shown in 16 mm.
Header image taken from Beverly and Tony Conrad’s Straight and Narrow, 1970.
Courtesy of Beverly and Tony Conrad and LUX, London.
For the tenth iteration of Bonington Film Nights, we’re pleased to present four films by Annette Kennerley, Ian Giles, Stephen Isaac-Wilson and Charlotte Prodger to coincide with LGBT+ History Month.
Each of the artists explore queer space through film, focusing on differing geographies, from the club to landscapes, documenting the erasure and reclaiming of queer spaces. The artists utilise numerous techniques such as voice overs and verbatim theatre to explore both personal and collective subjectivity. Collectively the films explore queer desire, (in)visibility, relationships, resistance, collective action, and the body’s relationship to space and technology.
If you would like to attend this event, please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
After the Break (1998)
Annette Kennerley
13 minutes
Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag (2019)
Ian Giles
25 minutes
Fleshback: Queer Raving in Manchester’s Twilight Zone (2018)
Stephen Isaac-Wilson
17 minutes
SaF05 (2019)
Charlotte Prodger
39 minutes
Ian Giles completed his MFA in 2012 at the Slade School of Fine Art. He was a LUX Associate Artist 2012/13. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Outhouse, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Studio Four, OUTPOST, Norwich; Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag, presented by Gasworks at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London (all 2019); After BUTT, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York; Video Club: Sex Talks, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; After BUTT, Chelsea Space, London (all 2018). Ian was an inaugural winner of the Shannon Michael Cane Award in 2018. He was a New Geographies commissioned artist 2018-20 and is currently a recipient of the Jerwood New Work Fund.
Annette Kennerley is a writer and filmmaker based in London. She was born in Cheshire and started making films in the 1980s. She was awarded a BA in Fine Art (Film & Video) at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London in 1991 and has worked mainly with Super 8 and 16mm film, experimenting with optical printing techniques and with the support of production awards from the Arts Council. Her work has exhibited at cinemas and film festivals nationally and internationally.
Annette’s films explore themes of childhood, motherhood, love, loss and sexuality. She draws on personal experiences in many of her films, though she has also made experimental documentaries with transgender people and directed a Transgender Film Festival at the LuxCinema for several years in the 1990s. She is also a writer and a teacher/mentor to young people.
Stephen Isaac-Wilson is a black queer London-based director who has directed films for Channel 4, i-D, Victoria Miro and the Tate, and worked with artists including Jorja Smith, Isaac Julien and Klein. Stephen grew up in southeast London, and in 2013 was accepted onto the BBC’s prestigious production trainee scheme, where he began his filmmaking career. In 2015/16, he worked across the Emmy award-nominated series about LGBT rights, Gaycation, presented by Elliot Page.
Last year he was commissioned to direct a portrait film for the Tate’s Queer British Art exhibit and also produced a 40-minute Mykki Blanco documentary about black queer alternative culture in Johannesburg. Stephen combines both his journalistic background with his visual art sensibilities, to tell beautifully emotive and thought-provoking stories.
His work has been screened at the ICA, Tate and the Barbican, as well as a film festivals including Outfest and Iris Prize.
Charlotte Prodger lives in Glasgow and is represented by Hollybush Gardens and Koppe Astner. Last year she represented Scotland at Venice Biennale and won the Turner prize in 2018. Solo shows include Subtotal, Sculpture Center, New York (2017); BRIDGIT, Hollybush Gardens, London (2016); Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2016); 8004-8019, Spike Island, Bristol (2015); Nephatiti, Glasgow International (2014); Markets with The Block, Chelsea Space, London (2014) and Percussion Biface 1-13, Studio Voltaire (2012), London. Group shows and screenings include Lichtspiele, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017); British Art Show 8 (2016); Weight of Data, Tate Britain, London (2015); The Secret Life, Murray Guy, New York (2015); An Interior that Remains an Exterior, Künstlerhaus Graz (2015); Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain, Tate Britain (2014), Holes in the Wall, Kunsthalle Freiburg (2013) and Frozen Lakes, Artists Space, New York (2013). Performances include Orange Helvetica Title Sequence, NY Book Art Fair, MOMA PS1 with Bookworks (2014).
Coinciding with his current solo exhibition Now & Then, we’re delighted to screen Dick Jewell’s seminal 2002 documentary Kinky Gerlinky, bringing together footage shot at the legendary club night between 1990 and 1993.
Kinky Gerlinky was the biggest, most fabulous, most stylish nightclub London had ever seen. This documentary, edited from over 200 hours shot on 21 nights in the early nineties, conveys the experience of one full night out at the club. Flamboyant poses on the red carpet, debauchery on the dance floor, glamorous catwalk competitions and extravagant backstage action – this film captures it all.
By nature a fleeting phenomenon, club culture is rarely recorded on film in any depth. Kinky Gerlinky goes the distance, offering unique intimacy with its subject – with most of the action performed directly for the camera; the costumes are out-of-this-world, as are the attitudes. A welcome flashback to wilder clubbing days, it’s also a hilarious in-your-face examination of the cultural and sexual politics of celebrity and glamour.
In collaboration with the NTU Fine Art Live Lecture programme, Bonington Film Night #8 will take the form of a short introduction by writer and curator Amy Budd, followed by a curated selection of films that she has entitled Dirty Pictures.
Dirty Pictures comprises a selection of historic and contemporary diary films, together with examples of surveying films and videos that are explicitly diaristic. Also included are a selection of moving-image works that are more ambiguous. Both personal and expressive in their means of production, they display radical forms of new image-making through poetic renderings of individual observations, memories and reflections.
Amy Budd is a curator and writer based in London. Since 2014 she has been in the role of Exhibitions Organiser and Deputy Director at Raven Row, London. During this time she has curated exhibitions including: 56 Artillery Lane, 2017, co-curated with Naomi Pearce; Machine Vision: Steina and Woody Vasulka, 2016; and Speaking Parts, 2015. She has previously worked at Chisenhale Gallery and was steering committee chair of OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich from 2010-13.
Her writings have been published by Art Monthly, Afterall, This Is Tomorrow, and Kaleidoscope. She curated the screening programme I See It Feelingly for Parallel: ICO Art + Cinema Weekend at Arnolfini, Bristol in 2016, and was Writer-in-Residence for LUX Moving Image Biennial in 2012.