As a filmmaker and researcher I am examining the trace of human presence on contested landscapes and environments on the cusp of change. My films document sites of power and corporate interest at particular moments in time uncovering layers of narrative embedded in these contested landscapes, whether East London prior to the Olympics, abandoned military architecture of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment of Orford Ness, the oil industry on the Scottish coastline, the contentious expansion of Sizewell nuclear power station, or the exploitation of the Far North.
My work sits within a lineage of filmmakers addressing ideas about our relationship to and impact on natural and constructed landscapes and environments through a reflexive observational approach to making work using a cross-disciplinary methodology that includes walking, photography, filmmaking, sound recording, historical and archive research, interviews, books and podcasts.
As well as a Film and Fine Art lecturer with a passion for experimental film and artists’ moving image, I curate a monthly artists’ film night, Art Station Film at The Art Station, a community focused arts organisation housed in a 1950s post office building in Saxmundham, Suffolk. The monthly film screening event shows a diverse range of artists’ film and documentary both historic and contemporary. The programme has developed over the past two years from showing early avant garde cinema to contemporary artist’s moving image work, occasionally inviting guest filmmakers.
My films have been shown in galleries, museums and festivals internationally including Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London, Pompidou Centre, Paris, Barbican Cinema, London; Anthology Film Archives, New York and Venice, Edinburgh, BFI London, Rotterdam and New York Film Festivals. My work is distributed by Lux, London, Lightcone, Paris, Video Data Bank, Chicago and Canyon Cinema, San Francisco.
