A Cinema at JTG

23 Jul 2009 - 26 Jul 2009

A Cinema takes up temporary residence in a cavernous space of the gallery prompting the union of 3 concurrent events; an exhibition in the labyrinth of its auxiliary rooms and 2 screenings.

Curators, filmmakers and artists were invited to respond to the specific context of the show. The James Taylor Gallery has always provided a unique context to exhibitors, ignoring the traditional conventions of a neutral white space, the gallery retains the reminders of its past. Its visibly layered history attracts filmmakers and producers to utilise the space as a set to feed their own narratives. However for exhibitions its distressed walls, weighty metal doors and dilapidated bus garage with a domineering tyre pile means the space constantly threatens to consume the work.

With a makes-shift Cinema installed in the space the contributors must respond to this intricate context whilst presenting an open dialogue that reveals their differing perspectives, values and aspirations which could be seen to be found on different sides of the divide between mainstream cinema and fine art film.

Cinema Leaflet.pdf

playing with narratives

Private View 23rd July 6.30pm-8.30pm
Open 24 July - 26 July 1pm - 7pm

This exhibition brings together four artists who were invited to present work which responded to Cinema.

Jon Garlick
Through deconstructionist philosophies Jon Garlick re presents and re-contextualises film narrative structures. His practice utilises various techniques of reappropriating existing footage such as re-editing narrative films or creating collages from multiple film clips from his accumulated archives. He investigates the audio-visual image, it's unique (non) narrative language and where, in between these two entities, lays the real and the fantastical.

Eugenia Ivanissevich
Eugenia Ivanissevich explores what happens as the three dimensional world is captured onto the flat surface of a print or screen; and how through processes of deconstruction, re-assemblage, spatial configurations and layering, she may undo that. This has led her to a practice where film and photography become building blocks towards a sculptural aesthetic in constant flux. Inventive and playful new forms of representation arise through such exercises, which in turn demand new ways of looking at and engaging with from the viewer's point of view. Her installation and object-based works adopt method of working from collage, Photoshop and pop-up books and is often site-specific.

Sheena Macrae
Macrae's work manipulates popular iconography in film and video through compression, exploring the modern fascination with speed, nostalgia, information and entertainment. She misappropriates the readymade format of cinema and television through digital media technologies fixating obsessively on pivotal recurring narrative junctions. These works parody and reconstruct the dynamics of Hollywood clichés, collective memory and the standardisation of film narratives, co-opting the syntax of film language to develop alternative meaning through post-production remix.

Savvas Papasavva
Papasavva marries together sculpting, design and filmmaking. A constant outcome of his practice is the building of wooden and bespoke filming equipment, using craft and carpentry techniques to produce alternatives to standard industry equipment. He uses the equipment in a range of different ways, either employing them in movie making workshops or animation lessons and to provide a meaty flesh to a somewhat bony fantasy production company called Misc Pro. The production company is a context in which he can operate creatively and explore substantial and disparate activities, providing him with continuity, autonomy and anonymity.

A selection of shorts by Jonathan Entwistle

Screening Saturday July 26 2009 7.00pm
Free

Making selections for a short film screening is never easy. Especially when the screening is no longer taking place in the traditional cinema setting but rather in the cavernous expanses of a haggard warehouse.

It was essential for me to take this into account when preparing a group of films. Narrative films of the nature I have selected are almost always made with little thought about their final exhibition - it is often the dark cinema space, specifically designed to black itself out and exhibit a moving picture perfectly before your eyes. I wanted the shorts to reflect their screening space. After all, this is the point at which the audience interacts with the stories and characters. I went for films that had expanses. Landscapes of sea; beach; moor; cliff. Empty landscapes that were seemingly void of activity yet truly housed, not only the brief stories of these films, but thousands and thousands of previous tales and industries. Just like James Taylor.

To me the decaying corners of the gallery and screening space here are not too far removed from the high moorlands, or an icy beach in February. Both spaces, certainly for me, have a grand haunting quality. Even the colour palettes are similar. I was very lucky to be able to select four films from UK directors that fit with my ideas for the space.

The subject matter of these shorts is so uniquely British that I feel it fits perfectly with what the James Taylor Gallery might once have been used for. The shouts, quarrels, debates and laughter of the people who once worked the floors where we now sit and watch these films should resonate through these stories from all around the country, and also hold a reflection of what it has now become.

Jonathan Entwistle

Presenting
The Lobster Trap (2008) directed by Henry Darke
Trip (2008) directed by Harry Wootliff
Cotton Stone (2009) directed by Jonathan Entwistle
All Day Breakfast (2008) directed by Julian Kerridge

ping pong present screen-play

Screening Sunday July 27 2009 7.00pm
Free

screen-play looks at a selection of works that turn a blind eye to conventional narrative structure. The presented videos focus on altering the stage of actions, resisting their accomplishment. They do so by playing with the position of the subject and the duration of the time frame. The invited artists propose technical and conceptual shifts that fracture the viewers' expectations, reversing the course of the events and the context in which they take place. This mode of operation allows for a redefinition of the source material employed, as well as a reframing of the setting in which the action occurs.
The notion of repetition, overlapping and de-contextualization are stretched out to turn the ordinary into the cinematic and the cinematic into the performative.
It is where actions and contexts lose their original significance that new interpretive spaces are created - spaces that go beyond any presupposed reading.

List of works:

Emanuel Almborg, Newsreel, 2008, 10 min; courtesy of the artist
George Barber, Absence of satan, 1985, 4.46 min; courtesy of the artist
Slater Bradley, Recorded Yesterday, 2004, 2.02 min; courtesy of Max Wigram Gallery
Matthew Noel-Tod, Bicycle Thief, 1998/2001, 3.30 min; courtesy of the artist
Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, My Ideal House, 2007, 2.20 sec; courtesy of the artist
Brian Rhodes, Glenn Branca Solo Phaseshift, 2009, 7 min; courtesy of the artist
Zbig Rybczynski , New Book (Nowa Ksiazka),1975, 10.26 min; courtesy of Zbig Visions Ltd. and the artist
Józef Robakowski, The Market, 1970, 6 min; courtesy of the Archive of Polish Experimental Film at the Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw and the artist
Sepideh Saii, Untitled: Buffalo 66, 2008, 1.49 sec; courtesy of the artist
Alessandro Sambini, Presidents, 2009, 8.45 min; courtesy of the artist
Patrick Ward, Reception, 2004, 4.31 min; courtesy of the artist

ping pong is a double act founded in 2009 that explores the dynamics of curatorial dialogue. It is a continuous flow of ideas that produces unexpected results over the process of exchange. The only exception to the rule is that the ball never falls, simply keeps bouncing.
ping pong is Marialaura Ghidini and Gaia Tedone.

Images from A Cinema at JTG

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