Space - a screening of Artists’ short films
Space has always been an integral element in artists’ practice, regardless of genre, epoch or medium. It has been drawn, sculpted, designed, reimagined, explored, or simply experienced in a myriad of ways, bringing the audiences’ attention to the spaces they inhabit, and asking that they look at them differently. Of course, the artistic exploration of space is not confined to the physical environment. Artists of all genres, and not least those working in film and video, have presented space through an intellectual, emotional and/or sociopolitical lens, recognising that space is not merely a site that our bodies inhabit.
The Covid pandemic has seen us cede control over the space around us in ways most of us have not experienced before. We have been spatially confined and yet, paradoxically, the lines between our public and private spheres have become increasingly blurred. More recently, the artificial boundaries we put in place have begun to dissolve yet the world that we inhabit has forever changed and we have changed along with it. For Space – a screening of artists’ short films, we invited artists to explore notions of space as we emerge from a world in which the space around us has rarely been so measured and so protected, and seemed so confined - or so vast.
All of the works selected for this screening have been made since the pandemic began, and some of them are a direct response to the lockdown. In very different ways, Sudhir Ambasana and Francesca Giuliano examine domestic interiors and the possessions that help to shape their perception and experience of those spaces. Sara Townley revisits her ancestral home and reflects upon the complexities of the intergenerational transmission of trauma it represents. Meanwhile, Camille Serisier questions the very concept of ‘home’ and what it means when the term has no designated site.
Becky Moriarty and Tom Wright escape their four walls and take us with them through their local environs, each respectively questioning or asserting their sense of belonging within them. Celina Collot explores Marc Auge’s concept of ‘non-place’, that liminal space we exist in when in transit, for example – spaces in which concerns about relations, history and identity cease to exist. In contrast, Flora Litchfield invites us into a site imbued with its own history, having borne witness to generations of people at work and at play.
Through explorations of personal and communal histories, spaces, and objects, these films interrogate the interdependence of place, perception and memory, to thoughtfully reflect upon our relationships to domestic and public spaces, and the ways in which they influence our sense of self, home, community and belonging.
Space - Contributing Artists
Curated by Sightlines Projects
Sightlines Projects is a Bristol-based curatorial partnership formed by Roz Bonnet and Sarah Knight. Our intention is to offer a platform for experimentation to emerging and established artists across all mediums, and to collaborate with artists to push and develop curatorial strategies.
Becky Moriarty
Becky Moriarty is Irish-made but based in London. An illustrator and graphic designer, with a passion for image-making, collaborating with others and any chance to put pencil to paper. When not drawing, Becky can be found drinking coffee in London Fields, doing yoga or chasing the night around Hackney.
Camille Serisier
Camille Serisier is a contemporary artist born in Australia and now based in Kent within the United Kingdom. She is interested in re-writing old stories and making new narratives that reflect contemporary lived experience. Her narratives often begin as watercolour imaginings that grow into a diverse range of interdisciplinary projects presented across physical and digital platforms.
Flora Litchfield
Flora Litchfield is a visual artist living and working in Edinburgh, UK. Her work explores the relationship between architecture and nature, and between evolution and erosion. Having grown up in the Scottish Borders, the North’s deindustrialisation has had a profound influence on her work – the stories, places and people left behind are a continuous inspiration.
Sara Townley
From a wee country where locals can’t decide on a name and politicians cannot decide full stop. Sara Townley investigates Northern Ireland’s ‘ceasefire babies’. Townley’s practice spans themes of inheritance, memory and identity whilst bringing together research and primary sources designed to transcend local issues into universal narratives.
Celina Collot
Celina Collot is a French-Mexican filmmaker and visual artist based in Switzerland. Using literature, photography and moving image, Celina has been navigating narratives for over 10 years inspired by her own experiences and human interactions. Having completed a bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Production in Mexico and a video specialisation in Switzerland, Celina works as a freelance videographer and editor focusing on fashion, arts and commercial fields.
Francesca Giuliano
Francesca Giuliano is a London-based interdisciplinary artist working with fragments and detritus as an exploration of discomfort. She uses artmaking to push at her boundaries. She creates material and immaterial installations using ingredients such as household items, personal possessions, the spoken and written word, found footage, schematics, speech-to-text transcripts, screen captures, memories, and data.
Sudhir Ambasana
Sudhir Ambasana is an architectural designer and a digital artist. He received his MA from Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC), Frankfurt, under the specialisation - Architecture an Aesthetic Practice (AAP) Ambasana is interested in bringing the human subject back into the discourse of architecture - asubject he believes was absent for a very long period of architecture history.
Tom Wright
Tom Wright is a Leeds based filmmaker and videographer. He has produced over a dozen short narrative and experimental films, along with a couple of documentaries. His experimental film Desca was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the ‘Young Artists Summer Show 2021’.