Captured in a transient series, Mayflies presents 3 events taking place in 3 cities across the North of England. Each event includes a live presentation and a screening programme of artists’ film and video, bringing audiences and artists together for a unique, collective encounter.
To launch the Mayflies series, two of Sherwin’s single screen film works will be shown at Site. ‘Views from Home’ is Sherwin’s poetic timelapse portrait of light shifting through domestic space and ‘Cycle’ captures a simple circular loop of shifting shadows.
Guy Sherwin, accompanied by his collaborator Lynn Loo, will present an evening of new and older 16mm expanded film works, Mobius Loops (2007) uses multiple projectors to create a single, mesmerising projection with the which the artist himself interacts. An active member of London Film-Makers’ Co-operative in the 1970s, Sherwin makes experimental film and expanded cinema performances that delve deep into the magic of celluloid, focusing on the processes at work in the marriage between film, light, time and chemistry.
The Mayflies Screening Programme will be a constant element playing at each venue, in a single, sit-down, cinema-style screening. The films expand on the live works by offering an off-kilter sense of projected space. Many of the pieces are set in the interiors of houses that have taken on a threatening hue, and others inhabit streets where something subtle is amiss. At turns funny, magical, dark and absurd, these landscapes display a psychotic sense of abandon. Artists include George Barber, John Bock, Deborah Bower, Wojciech Bruszewski, Rose Butler, Michelle Handelman, Nick Jordan, Vladimir Logutov, Reynold Reynolds & Patrick Jolley and Ben Rivers.
Mayflies is the result of an 18 month ‘Curatorial Dialogue’ project, co-ordinated by Site Gallery, as part of Digital North, a consortium of media arts organisations in the North of England. Participating curators, Robin Close, Ilana Mitchell and Kate Taylor have received a programme of professional development and mentoring, focussing on good practice and collaboration.