Year of release: 2006
Original format: Super16mm
Running time: loop
Screening format: DVD (silent)
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk
Description
Petals of wild flowers gathered from the roadside verge during a walk along the south west coastal path through the industrial Cattedown area of Plymouth on 27 May 2006. Once home the petals were pressed onto a clear strip of 16mm film. The filmstrip retraces the steps of a short walk when I left the path, drawn towards the intense saturated crimson of the poppy flowers colonizing the waste ground that had been scraped bare earlier in the year.
Production notes
Poppies is a re-imagining of memory and place, a 'becoming within landscape', that references both JM Turner's intimate studies of the naked female body - until recently these were thought to have been destroyed shortly after the artist died - and the Cymric myth of Blodeuwedd, whose name means 'flower-face' or ‘flower-wild'.
I collected these wild flower petals during a walk into scrubland to the side of the south west coastal path where the route cuts through a limestone ridge under a junction of electricity pylons.
Once home, I emptied my pockets and made a filmstrip, using the petals to trace my footsteps. Poppies maps my experience of the journey/space, which for me exists somewhere between portrait and landscape, and the interiority of looking and being, as the film moves from the fluttering blue speedwell to the charged intensity of the red poppy folds.
The south west coastal path of Britain has been a focus of my practice since early 2005. Verge, a dual screen installation, is the first film-based artwork, made in collaboration with Stuart Moore for Salt Gallery, Hayle.
Sea City is another collaborative project with Stuart Moore: this Super 8mm work explores the perimeter of Plymouth along its boundary with the sea. Sea Front, directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore, and produced by Kayla Parker, is the first film to be released from the Sea City project. Sea Front was premiered at the Assemblage exhibition, Peninsula Arts Gallery, University of Plymouth (2 - 5 November 2009); and won the London Short Film Festival 2010 Trick of the Light Award “for the most gorgeous looking film”, and was screened at Rich Mix, Shoreditch (13 January 2010). Sea Front also won the Media Innovation Award 2010: Independent Film/Video. The Media Innovation Awards celebrate the innovative use of media and design - the judges described the film as “a very atmospheric and nostalgic production that was beautifully produced.” Sea Front will screen in Experiment 4 programme (Guild Cinema 14 April) at the Experiments in Cinema festival in Albuquerque New Mexico: Experiments in Cinema is an annual collaboration between Basement Films, and the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of New Mexico (14 - 18 April 2010); at the East End Film Festival Adventures in Experiments programme at Rich Mix, Shoreditch: “a selection of work from artists, filmmakers and animators, exploring the limits of new form and creative expression” (programme description) (26 April 2010); and in International Program 2 at 7:30 pm Thursday 27 May in Capitol Theatre, Windsor Ontario, at Media City international festival of experimental film and video art held in Windsor Ontario in Canada and Detroit USA (25 - 29 May 200).
Publication and comments
Exhibition
2009
Trace and Transience exhibition at Triangle Gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK. Part of the Land/Water and the Visual Arts exhibition. Film screened as looped DVD on large monitor with photographic triptych on facing wall (5 - 16 May 2009)
2007
Regard exhibition, Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth, UK. As installation: film screened as two slightly out-stepped looped DVDs, simultaneously on two monitors at head height on plinths, with screens facing each other at 180 degrees, and photographic triptych mounted on wall in between. The viewer is prompted to consider the transient relationship between time and place, past and present, through the hypnotic flow of petals as they spin in an endless stream of moving images and the film stills of the pressed poppy petals, their intimate folds frozen in a series of photographic moments that frame the rupture between then and now, there and here. (14 to 18 May 2007)