John Smith: White Hole
Date uploaded: November 24, 2014
Tyneside Cinema and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network have announced the UK premiere of John Smith’s White Hole. The installation presents Smith’s perspective on the realities of Warsaw in 1980 and Leipzig in 1997, and draws together the artists fragmented recollections of two trips to Eastern Europe, before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall; commenting on two very distinctive places shaped by opposing ideologies – one Communist and the other Capitalist. White Hole is open daily Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm and on Sundays from 11am to 5pm at The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema, 10-12 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne.
An expanded version of Dark Light, Smith’s earlier work supported by his Jarman Award 2013, White Hole takes the viewer on a journey of opposites, reversals, positives and negatives, accompanied by a wry narrative that ultimately questions our idealised imaginings of life in other places, times and political systems.
White Hole is co-curated by Tyneside Cinema and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, and installed large-scale in The Gallery, the only artists’ moving image space in the country using the latest cinema projection technology.
Preview: Wednesday 26 November 2014
18:30: John Smith & Steven Claydon in conversation, Northern Charter 20:30-21:30: White Hole
John Smith was the winner of the Film London Jarman Award 2013, and the opening of White Hole at Tyneside Cinema coincides with the presentation of a selection of works shortlisted for this year’s Jarman Award in Newcastle-upon-Tyne organised by CIRCA Projects, including John Akomfrah, Sebastian Buerkner, Laura Buckley, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Steven Claydon, Redmond Entwistle, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Ursula Mayer, Rachel Reupke and Stephen Sutcliff. White Hole is also showing at La Galerie, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec in Paris until December 2014.
Smith has developed an extensive body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, his highly crafted films rework and transform reality, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema. Since 1972 he has made over fifty film, video and installation works that have been shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television around the world and awarded major prizes at many international film festivals.
White Hole follows Chromatic Aberration by Aura Satz, and Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s EDIT and 20,000 Days on Earth, that formed the opening programme for The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema’s new artists’ moving image space, that launched in September.
In January 2015, The Gallery presents Sebastian Buerkner’s award-winning The Chimera of M (2013), a 3D stereoscopic film exploring themes of longing, intimacy, loss, aspiration, lust and identity as seen through the eyes of an unseen, unreliable protagonist, supported by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. This is followed by a programme including a new work by Rachel Reupke for a co-commission with Cubitt Gallery and a new commission by Tyneside Cinema’s artist-in-residence Mikhail Karikis.
For more information, contact Janette Scott Arts PR on [email protected] or +(44)7966 486156.
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