When: Tuesday 19 September, 7.30-9.00PM
Where: Primary, 33 Seely Road, Nottingham, NG7 1NU
Booking: Free, limited spaces available. Please book here.
Come along to a screening of short films by artist Matthew Arthur Williams, followed by a Q&A chaired by Primary curator Jade Foster. During September, Matthew is in residence at Primary as part of our Work in Common series, which encourages artists to experiment with different ways of working – either testing out a speculative idea or developing new collaborations. The event starts at 7:30pm, where there will be an opportunity to grab a drink and some snacks at our bar before joining us in watching An Impossible Allegory (2019) and Soon Come (2022); the latter was presented earlier this year at Matthew’s first institutional solo exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Matthew told us that what connects both films is practice and memory, which he hopes to work through during his residency.
There is an additional surprise film that we may have time to show. We will reveal the work during the event on the day!
Matthew Arthur Williams, Soon Come (2022).
Soon Come (2022)
Two-channel film & sound installation
20 mins 25 secs
Soon Come is a film and sound installation, split across two opposing screens made with 4K digital video, 16mm analogue film, personal archival photographs, archival footage and audio sourced from Stoke-on-Trent City Archives, Media Archive of Central England and Staffordshire Film Archive. The opposing screens present a fight for the viewer’s attention, hinting at the impossibility of authoritatively archiving complex and ever-changing communities of people. Using detailing images of the Staffordshire landscape that has been touched in some way by human presence or industry, it is overlaid with various voices from Williams’ own family and others in the Caribbean community of Stoke-on-Trent, providing intimate anecdotes of movement in communities across vast distances. The film was exhibited at Dundee Contemporary Arts with an exhibition title of the same name from 10 December 2022 - 26 March 2023, alongside 19 darkroom fibre-based photographs. These photographs that appear in the show, contained within vitrines on the walls installed under perspex on the floor of the gallery, use the photographic lens to further explore all of these places and the people connected to them.
An Impossible Allegory (2019) (in re-development)
Single-channel film
(originally 6 mins 39 secs)
An Impossible Allegory is a film that clings to the physical yet intangible loss of love. It is being redeveloped, and Matthew will show a revised iteration at Primary. The film is made using a number of cinematic mediums and currently lives in a state of further unfolding. Through the use of fabrics to address a motion of time, it infiltrates queer histories as an attempt to hold on to their memories and performs to act as a constant remembering. The complex allegory begins with the past relationship of composer Julius Eastman and poet R. Nemo Hill decades ago and weaves it with Hill's very own poem, ‘The Mandarin Orange Tree’, published in When Men Bow Down, to merge these realms together. An Impossible Allegory was exhibited at Paravent, Teile2o46, Berlin, Germany from 14 May - 12 June 2022.
Artist Bio:
Matthew Arthur Williams (he/him) (b. London 1989) is a visual and sound artist, photographer and DJ based in Glasgow. He completed his BA at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012.
His work has recently been exhibited at Dundee Contemporary Arts (2022), Jupiter Artland and Johnson Terrace Gardens both as part of a commission for Edinburgh Art Festival (2021) with a forthcoming solo show due at Stills, Edinburgh (2024).
He has further developed exhibition projects and commissions with the Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow (2022), Teile2o46, Berlin (2022) Viborg Kunsthal (2021), Street Level Photoworks (2019) and Transmission Gallery (2017).
Access:
This event will take place in our first-floor gallery space which is only accessible via stairs. Please email admin@weareprimary.org or call 0115 924 4493 with any access inquiries.