Past Event
The potential equivalence of water to film, and the speculative areas between land and sea, are central to this series of films exploring the estuaries and lagoons of documentary fiction. Prairie lands of the sea includes London premieres of Frances Scott’s CANWEYE { } and INCIPIT, screened with Phil Coy’s Wordland and the premiere of his new work Avoiding Green. Followed by a Q&A with the artists.
CANWEYE { } and INCIPIT were both commissioned by Focal Point Gallery and supported by Arts Council England. Wordland was commissioned by City Projects, funded by Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust, and supported by East Anglian Film Archive and LUX. Avoiding Green was commissioned by Invisible Dust for Hull City of Culture.
7pm Introduction
Phil Coy, Wordland (2008), 35 minutes
Language and property crumble in an exploration of the impact of coastal erosion on the people and landscape of North Norfolk. The film combines interviews, field recordings and archive footage, and features a specially commissioned soundtrack by Alexander Tucker.
Frances Scott, INCIPIT (2016), 5 minutes
‘Incipit’ originates from Latin, meaning “it begins”, and represents the initial sequence of notes in a musical composition. The work presents three musicians in the process of recording the film score for CANWEYE { }, composed by Leo Chadburn. Here, the constituent parts of the score are compressed to present an altered temporal space.
Frances Scott, CANWEYE { }, 32 minutes
In CANWEYE { }, the image of the film ‘set’ – between states of construction and deconstruction – becomes the main character in a meta-fiction, filmed on 16mm on Canvey Island and in Venice, where architectural and geological sites signify another kind of ‘set’. The work was first shown in a three-part construction that recalled a sound recording booth, with glass viewing panel into the space of the projection.
Phil Coy, Avoiding Green, 15 minutes (tbc)
Channelling the medium of knitting through digital film Avoiding Green explores the history of a small, but global, army of women who knit for working seafarers. The film unravels an unlikely kinship within an often-overlooked economy, and evokes the sea from different perspectives.
Discussion and Q&A
Phil Coy is an artist whose practice includes films, sculpture, architectural installations, sound, text, photography and performance. He collages concepts rooted in the radical art and literature of the 20th century, with the languages and architectures of global commerce. He is currently Leverhulme Artist in Residence at RAL Space: Centre for the UK Space Science and Satellite Observation. Solo exhibitions and screenings include: a permanent commission for Caledonian Road Cally Colour Chart (2016); as far as i know, Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2015); Moving Images, Siobhan Davies Studios (2013); Façade, Grimshaw Architects, London Festival of Architecture (2012); Loop, Barcelona (2011); Façade, Whitechapel Gallery (2011); Façade, South London Gallery (2010); Volt, Bergen, Norway (2010). Performances, group exhibitions and screenings include: Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2016); Wilkinson Gallery (2016); The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik (2016); Swedenborg Film Festival (2016); Alchemy Film Festival (2016); 58th and 59th BFI London Film Festivals (2014 and 2015); Wysing Arts Centre (2012); Whitstable Biennale (2012 and 2010); and Artprojx Cinema, New York (2011).
Frances Scott works with moving image and text, presented through screenings, installations, events and publications. Recent works have considered the rich material that exists around the periphery of the cinematic production and its apparatus, proposing an idea of film as composed of its metonymic fragments. Her solo exhibition CANWEYE { } was at Focal Point Gallery, Southend, July – October 2016. Other selected exhibitions and screenings include: KARST, Plymouth (2016); Alchemy Film Festival, Scotland (2016); ‘The London Open’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2015); and ‘Selected III’ videoclub and FLAMIN screening programme at Nottingham Contemporary, CCA Glasgow, FACT Liverpool and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013).
