A Poetic Primer, A Poetic Measurement, Saturday 28 March, 2pm
GoMA is delighted to host this seminar developed by Modern Edinburgh Film School as part of its exciting response to the upcoming collection exhibition, Ripples on the Pond.
A Poetic Primer, A Poetic Measurement
Ripples on the Pond
Modern Edinburgh Film School, Dr Sarah Neely, Anne Colvin
Saturday 28 March, Gallery 2, 2.00pm
Gallery of Modern Art,
Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow G1 3AH
Modern Edinburgh Film School presents an in-conversation and film screening primer for the exhibition Ripples on the Pond on the subjects of works on paper, moving image and women and film and collecting the ephemeral taken from its essay A Poetic Measurement published by Affiliate: Thinking Collections (a University of Glasgow programme funded by Creative Scotland).
Reflecting on the subjects of landscape, portraiture, play and feminine presence it presents a timeline of practices from the film poems of Margaret Tait active in film from the 1950s until her death in 1999 through generations of her influence, highlighting artists working and emerging in Scotland. It finds shore in practices in diverse geographic locations in San Francisco, USA and Melbourne, Australia and works made from 1970s to the present day. Reflecting on the exhibition’s subjects as well as themes of consciousness, perception and poetry are the film academic Dr Sarah Neely who will reflect on the essay and its selected moving image artists giving a broader and deeper context of Scotland, its women artists and their relationship to the camera and the screen.
In turn the talk will hear from visual artist Anne Colvin whose works in moving image mediating on time, frame, texture and gesture draws on a combination of found footage and her own film explorations. Ripples on the Pond will be screening – over the course of its duration – two of Colvin’s most recent film works which while reflecting on her growing body of moving image work will discuss its proximity to the poetics, intimacy and intellect of Margaret Tait’s cinema.
Ripples on the Pond is an exhibition of works from the Glasgow Museums’ Collection. It takes as the starting point recent acquisitions from the Glasgow Women’s Library 21 Revolutions series, relating them to other works in the collection and sparking questions about gender, themes and media choice in relation to women’s practice and visibility.
Ripples on the Pond is also a conversation between the works in the collection on paper and moving image and the invitation to Modern Edinburgh Film School and LUX Scotland to programme artists screenings within and beyond the gallery space. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to be part of that conversation and the exhibition can be seen as an essay that is to be read, re-read, critiqued and rethought, unsure where the ripples might end. The programme by Modern Edinburgh Film School can be seen as sister essay: responding to, commenting on, critiquing the holdings and re-imagining a collection through conversations with other works.
Dr Sarah Neely is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling, where she is member of the Centre for Scottish Studies and the Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies. Her recent research focuses on the work of Scottish women filmmakers and experimental filmmaking in Scotland. She is also currently working on a project involving colleagues at Stirling and the De Montfort University on British Silent Cinema and the transition to sound (1927-32). She has written extensively on the work of filmmaker and poet, Margaret Tait. She is the editor of Margaret Tait’s Poems, Stories and Writings (Carcanet 2012) and is also currently completing a monograph on Tait’s films (Peter Lang, 2015). Other recent publications include chapters and articles on Scottish women filmmakers, including Isobel Wylie Hutchison and Jenny Gilbertson (Films on Ice, ed. Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, 2015), and Ruby and Marion Grierson (Media Education Journal, 2014).
Anne Colvin is a Scottish artist based in San Francisco who works primarily with the moving image. Drawing on a combination of found footage and her own filmic explorations, Anne’s work has a heightened awareness of time, frame, texture and gesture.Colvin was most recently included in “The Shape of a Pocket: Anne Colvin and Margaret Tait”, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, California (2014); “One Minute Film Festival: 10 Years”, MASS MoCA (2013); Modern Edinburgh Film School, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (2013); “Fits and Starts”, Torrance Art Museum, California(2013); “The Very Eye of Night” with Maya Deren, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles (2012); “System Operations”, Eli Ridgway Gallery, San Francisco in conjunction with the ZERO1 Biennial (2012); “As Yet Untitled”, SF Camerawork (2011) and “Long Play: Bruce Conner and The Singles Collection”, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010) among others. Other recent group shows include Moyra Davey’s “One Minute Film and Video”, Narrowsburg, New York; “Mare Street Biennial”, Artistspace, London; “The Consequence”, Lowsalt Gallery, Glasgow and “Majuscule”, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York .Recent commissions include “A Granite Note” (2014), Mills College Art Museum; “Attn: Miss Calpurnia” (2012), San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and “The Forged Coupon”, Publication Studio (2011). Recent residencies include Creative Lab (2013), CCA, Glasgow.Her curatorial projects have been commissioned by Berkeley Art Museum; New Langton Arts and David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco and presented at Frieze Art Fair, London; NY Art Book Fair at MoMA/PS1 with White Columns and Poetic Research Bureau, Los Angeles.
Helen de Main, 21 Spare Ribs, (2012), collection of Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life (Glasgow Museums), © the artist
Anne Colvin, A Room Full of Stones, 2014, courtesy © the artist