[LuxWeeklyNews] LUX Weekly News 8 - 13 May: EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]

LUX Weekly News 8 - 13 May 2007

EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK


1. Retrospective- The Subjective Camera: Alia Syed, Greenwich  
Picturehouse, Wednesday 9 May, 6.45pm

2. Species of Spaces and other Pieces, Hollybush Gardens, 10 May - 10  
June, Private View: Wednesday 9 May 6.30 - 8.30 pm

3. Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, Herald Street Gallery, 12 May – 24 June

4. Claire Hooper: The Blessing, The Gallery, Sketch, 12 May to 23  
June, Opening Reception: Saturday 12 May, 12.30-2.30pm

5. The Work of Ian Breakwell, Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain,  
Saturday 12 May 2007, 1.30 - 5.45 pm


LUX LONDON EVENTS CALENDAR the most comprehensive daily listing of  
artists' moving image events, screenings and exhibitions in London  
www.lux.org.uk/resources/calendar.htm


1.

25 April – 30 May
RETROSPECTIVE: THE SUBJECTIVE CAMERA
Greenwich Picturehouse
180 Greenwich High Road, SE10 8NN
www.picturehouses.co.uk, 08707 550 065
The Subjective Camera is a series of retrospective film screenings of  
six film artists whose work examines subjectivity with an analysis of  
film language. Emerging within the context of the London Filmmakers’  
Co-op during the ‘80s and ‘90s, these artists each developed an  
independent practice that at once built on and countered the  
principles of the Structuralist film movement of the ‘70s. Their  
films extend anti-illusionist explorations of the materiality of film  
and incorporate investigations of the materiality of the body. With  
their shared history, that situates the artist at the centre of the  
physical process of putting the film together, sometimes as camera  
person as well as editor, these six artists weave into the filmmaking  
process a broad scope of contemporary concerns, from religion to  
psychoanalysis, the spaces of abstraction, voice, language and song,  
to the dialogue between personal and meta-narrative.
JAYNE PARKER, NINA DANINO, ALIA SYED, MICHAEL MAZIERE, SANDRA LAHIRE,  
SARAH PUCILL Curated by Sarah Pucill. Films screened in association  
with LUX

Wednesday 9 May, 6.45pm
Retrospective- The Subjective Camera: Alia Syed
Greenwich Picturehouse
180 Greenwich High Road, SE10 8NN
www.picturehouses.co.uk, 08707 550 065

ALIA SYED
Problems of translation and framing, and how the image is read,  
particularly in relation to gender and notions of cultural  
difference, mark the key concerns of Syed’s work. The use of her own  
spoken voice is present in all but her earliest films and in many  
ways this is countered with the fragmented body (pregnant stomach,  
feet, hands, neck and shoulders). A hallmark of Syed’s work is the  
manipulation of the image; slowing, speeding up or holding the image  
still, which coupled with the use of repetition, gives the image a  
textural quality. Denied access with the gaze, we are given instead  
her voice and her stories, circular and repeating narratives of  
desire which both can and cannot be translated. Through Syed’s  
process of layering image on image, and text on text through edits  
and optical printing techniques, inner conflict is ‘worked’. The  
image track weaves alongside a voice that is textured with different  
cultural spaces and languages, between fact, fiction, personal  
narrative and historical document. Her films flow between movements  
of sound, voice, image and subtitle; rhythms of colour and black and  
white examine a journey between borders that falls short of  
translation. The effect of this filmmaking process is to allow the  
viewer participation in a sensory experience that evokes a trans- 
cultural journey one is taken into rather than kept outside as voyeur.

Alia Syed will be taking part in a Q&A session after the screenings.

SWAN (1986, 4 mins, 16mm)
The latent power of the beast is juxtaposed with equally powerful  
cavernous spaces created by the swan’s feathers, drawing you in, as  
they inexorably open. The images are further abstracted through re- 
filming the bulb of the projector creating yet another surface tension.

UNFOLDING (1988, 20 mins, 16mm)
“I was interested in making a film about women's work spaces; the  
launderette is a functional space, but it is also a place where women  
meet socially. I spent a long period of time familiarising myself  
with the environment before commencing filming. My initial feeling of  
hesitancy in intruding into the space informed the editing of the  
film. My attempt at documenting ‘in’ the lives of the women was  
superseded by my desire to question my own role as maker.” AS

FATIMA’S LETTER (1992, 21 mins, 16mm)
A woman remembers her past by faces she sees while travelling on the  
Underground. She begins to believe that these people, like her, have  
all taken part in the same event. Her story takes the form of a  
letter to her friend Fatima.

SPOKEN DIARY (2001, 20 mins, 16mm)
Spoken Diary intertwines the inner angst of a woman traversing  
hesitation, loss and denial with that of her journey through dark,  
wet and desolate streets of London. The sound track is made up of a  
recitation of ‘boles’, spoken rhythms of north-Indian classical music  
and music from car windows. Interspersed are layers of words  
emanating from the fleeting movement of a pen on the pages of a diary.

I AND YOU (2006, 11 mins, DVD)

2.

10 May - 10 June
Private View: Wednesday 9 May 6.30 - 8.30 pm
Species of Spaces and other Pieces
Hollybush Gardens
Unit 2, BJ House
20 - 14 Hollybush Gardens
London E2 9QP
Tel: 0207 739 9651
www.hollybushgardens.co.uk
Exhibition open Thursday - Sunday 12 - 6 pm

Michal Budny
Andrea Büttner
Anja Kirschner
Pia Rönicke
Eline McGeorge
Anne Tallentire

3.

12 May – 24 June
Oliver Payne & Nick Relph
Herald Street Gallery
2 Herald Street, London E2 6JT
0207 168 2566
www.heraldst.com
Wed-Fri 11-6 Sat-Sun 12-6

4.

12 May to 23 June 2007
Sketch
CLAIRE HOOPER: THE BLESSING
Opening Reception: Saturday 12 May, 12.30-2.30pm
9 Conduit Street, London W1S 2XG
Tube: Oxford Circus/Piccadilly Circus
tel. 0870 777 4488
www.sketch.uk.com
Open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm
Free admission

Sketch is pleased to present The Blessing, a solo-exhibition by  
London-based artist Claire Hooper, featuring a new twelve-channel,  
site specific video-installation.

Spanning writing, drawing, sculpture and moving image, Hooper’s  
artistic practice forces us to observe and question our relationship  
with architectural space and the built environment. In Auditorium, as  
with many of her videos and text-based projects, Hooper revels in the  
language of Modernism while constructing at once a louche and  
psychologically charged mis-en-scène that draws attention to the  
sensuality of surface whilst
subverting or revealing the capacity of design to produce a corporeal  
response.

In The Blessing, produced in response to the architecture and multi- 
screen context of the gallery at sketch, Hooper again draws on  
historical precedents, this time taking reference points from  
religious sources such as Fra Angelico’s Visions of saints and Saint  
Teresa’s description of ‘the rapture’. Using the gallery as a  
backdrop to much of the film, Hooper interweaves a quasi-religious  
vision of ecstasy with the dis-jointed account of a mind-altering  
acid trip by combining straightforward narrative performance with  
kaleidoscopic effects that fill the space. The soundtrack was  
produced with musician and artist Kenichi Iwasa, whose compositions  
include gospel samples that define the structure of the installation  
and draw from the nature of the experiences that the work is based on.

5.

Saturday 12 May 2007, 1.30 - 5.45 pm
The Work of Ian Breakwell
Clore Auditorium
Tate Britain
Millbank
London SW1P 4RG
£20 (£15 concessions), booking required
Price includes refreshments
For tickets book online www.tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888

Artist Ian Breakwell (1943–2005) employed most forms of visual media  
during his 40-year career. The written word was central to much of  
his work and he is perhaps best known for his diaries, which he  
incorporated into his art works and exhibited in galleries, broadcast  
on radio and television, and published in book form. This study day,  
chaired by Paul Bonaventura, brings together some of the commentators  
and collaborators who worked with Breakwell to discuss his legacy.
Organised in collaboration with Central Saint Martins College of Art  
and Design and funded in association with the Arts and Humanities  
Research Council


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