Frank Abbott

Studio B2

Frank Abbott is a filmmaker and performer particularly interested in open collaborative processes of production and exhibition. He began working with groups like the Scratch Orchestra in the 1970’s and his collaborations continue today. His interest in street level film have led him to being part of the Film Free and Easy team.

His own early works explored power relations in the new social spaces opened up by emerging media (initially television). The internet, mobile phone and digital technology have become both the site and subject of his more recent work. 

Frank continues a fifteen year collaboration with the painter Duncan Higgins using mobile phone video messaging, which has been exhibited in The House of World Cultures, Berlin. Work involving signage made from illuminated rubbish won the Nottingham Castle Open Exhibition prize in 2013 and his interactive work, ‘Processing’, was shown there is 2014.

In the last few years he has identified Christchurch Gardens, adjacent to Primary, as a focus of interest and worked with video and physical interventions to inhabit this inner-city space. These activities are currently associated with the wider Future Machine project which connects a number of artists in locations nationally - all attempting to create rituals for when the future comes.