Past Event
The premiere of Things Fall Apart by Duncan Whitley, with an introduction by Poppy Bowers, Exhibition Curator at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester; and a Q&A between the artist and filmmaker Lucy Harris.
Things Fall Apart is a part-fictional, part-documentary film following the recent grassroots protests of Coventry City Football Club supporters. The film depicts a disenfranchised community and a local battle for the intangible values of place, identity and belonging, in which a major international hedge fund appears to hold the cards.
Ideas around communities, place and memory are traced through a selection of sound and audiovisual works by Whitley, including the first UK screening of Entre Naranjos y Cal, a film set in Seville exploring the expression of presence and absence through flamenco song in the city’s major fiesta, the Semana Santa.
7pm – Introduction by Poppy Bowers
Selected sound works (2004 – 2016)
Entre Naranjos y Cal (2017) 17mins
Things Fall Apart (2017) 17 mins
8.15 – Q&A with Lucy Harrison
Duncan Whitley (b.1974) is a visual artist and sound recordist, working at the intersections of contemporary visual and sound art, socially-engaged practice and sensory ethnography.
He has presented site-specific projects, audiovisual and sound installations in the UK and Europe, including Writing of Stones, b-side Festival (2014); Sbarbi’s Arrow, Soundfjord, London (2013); G. D. Parada, Serralves Museum, Porto (2010). He has presented live sound and screenings at venues including Café OTO, London; Chateau Morimont, France; Galerie On, Poland; Slade Research Centre, London; Stroud Valley Artspace, Gloucestershire; Tate Modern, London; Museo de Bellas Artes, Argentina; Centro de Arte Experimental UNSAM, Argentina, and Whitstable Bienale. He has worked in an ethnomusicological context in Seville for over 10 years, working with the collaboration of a number of flamenco singers in the city. His work is supported by the Platform for Contemporary Flamenco Studies in Seville, and a permanent collection of his field recordings is held at the British Library.
Lucy Harris is a visual artist filmmaker who lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, cinemas and film festivals in the UK and internationally, including the Whitechapel, BFI and ICA cinemas. She is currently the recipient of the Rita Harris ACME studio award, and the winner of the Jules Wright 2016 Prize. She is an active participant in the artist filmmaking community, through collaborations with fellow artists, curated screenings and through her work as an editor of artists films. Recent projects include working with the filmmaker Sarah Wood on the exhibition A Murmuration, commissioned by the Brighton Festival in 2015 and a continuing association with the filmmaker David Leister with whom she regularly collaborates. She also contributes to Analogue Recurring, a project to promote analogue film production, screenings and performance. In her editing work Lucy specialises in working with visual artists and recent projects include the artist feature Heated Gloves, by William English (selected for BFI London film festival 2015, Rotterdam film festival 2016). She is currently working with Animate and the London Sinfionetta as an edit consultant and with the artist filmmaker Rosalind Nashashibi. She works as a visiting lecturer at Kingston University and the London Film School.
Poppy Bowers is Exhibition Curator at the Whitworth, The University of Manchester, working across temporary exhibitions and commissions. From 2011-2016 she was Assistant Curator at Whitechapel Gallery where she organized exhibitions with artists including Richard Tuttle, Sarah Lucas and Giuseppe Penone as well as major outdoor exhibitions in Athens in collaboration with NEON Foundation. In addition she was a selector and co-curator of The London Open 2015. Previously, she was Exhibition Coordinator at Wellcome Collection where she worked on exhibitions such as War and Medicine, Exquisite Bodies and Dirt and contemporary art commissions with artists including Aura Satz, Keith Wilson and Bill Fontana. Between 2015-2016 she founded an independent exhibition space, NEW STUDIO, curating solo shows by both British and international artists. She has contributed to several publications including Sarah Lucas: SITUATION ABSOLUTE BEACH MAN RUBBLE (2013), The London Open (2015), Eduardo Paolozzi (2017).
