Archepology

Archaeology (also Archeology) – noun: the study of human history through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artefacts and other physical remains. Anthropology – noun: the study of evolution and humankind, societies and cultures and their development.

Bureau is proud to present Archepology, an exhibition of international film and video works, by Oliver Bancroft, Freek Drent & Stella van Voorst van Beest, Esther Johnson, and Margaret Salmon.

The works in Archepology explore intimate relationships to particular surroundings, and highlight individual experiences as a way of indirect cultural, political and social commentary. The idea of ‘place’ is seen as a complex notion, ideas of which are delivered, with emotional resonance, through personal memories, histories, interaction with family and wider surrounding communities and descriptions of localities.

Blurred lines between history and biography, fiction and reality are explored. Utilising different film technologies, from Super-8, to 16mm, 35mm and digital formats, a further connection between the artists’ works is the importance of aesthetics; the use and development of a cinematic aesthetic and language, whilst exploring varying subject matter. Full of richly textured imagery, and closely bound to painterly traditions, the selected works ultimately explore cultural, social and political potential without abandoning aesthetic significance.

Oliver Bancroft’s work is occupied by myth and the natural world. He works with images recorded on Super-8 and 16mm film to dissect visual and narrative information, and utilises Old Master iconography and painterly effects within his work. Bancroft’s most recent works are made entirely in camera by slowly fading through the lens aperture. These static studies (of people and landscapes) subtly alter with each light change, prompting new and suggestive narratives, with each new aperture movement. In this way, Bancroft creates mini-scripts of reality, without ever committing them to a true narrative process.

Bancroft’s total absence of camera movement, and attention to seemingly unimportant details, produces meditative works that almost freeze each scene into a painting. Consequently, everyday motifs from the periphery of Western culture become highly expressive ‘tableaux vivant’.

Freek Drent & Stella van Voorst van Beest’s work focuses on the inhabitants of apartment blocks in Transylvania, Romania, that were built under the Ceausescu regime. Referencing architecture, impermanence and urbanisation, the duo’s film works reflect contemporary social shifts: sometimes documentary in nature, sometimes a poetic transformation of reality, usually a combination of both. Urbanisation and increasing traffic suggest a purposeful movement here: beyond the past, towards the future.

In atmospheric images they capture the faded glory of a utopia, highlighting the continuation of the past in the present. The urbanisation of Romanian rural areas, the expression of a central ideology, once imposed and now curdled, is essentially different from urbanisation in the West... “Wizened old people still remember how the land was taken away from the farmers; a disillusioned man tells that half the neighbourhood is empty because of unemployment following the closure of the mines. Others are more cheerful: the icon-maker, who strives after divinity in his mosaics, earning enough to be branded a capitalist, and the rockers who practise Satanism because they consider it to be the ‘religion of the individual, not of the masses’.” (Quote by Wilma Sutö)

Esther Johnson’s films reflect concerns of regeneration and heritage, traditions of the past and changing futures. Insights are gleaned from individual’s memories and the many stories told by microcosm’s of people. There is a strong emphasis on architecture and familiar minutiae that characterizes places we inhabit. These details are also integral to evoking strong imaginings of the past, themes of public and private space, old architecture versus new and the alienation of such 'non-places'. Her films are an original study into techniques of documentary and the relationships between sound and image, fact and fiction. Johnson’s discerning eye for the commonplace, reveals a startling vernacular of the everyday.

Her subject matter is diverse, ranging from: a community that lives on the fastest eroding coastline in Europe; a journey through one of Buffalo’s oldest hotels - faded 1920s Art Deco interior versus shabby retro Americana; and, the fascinating unseen world of amateur radio operators, or ‘Radio HAMS’.

Margaret Salmon’s works represent a film language that draws upon both documentary and fictional devices in order to portray specific social characters. All three portraits were shot originally in 16mm and super 8, using very basic technique, while the sound was often recorded by the subject depicted. Experimenting with the combination of sound and moving image, each film explores the possible friction between image and word as a platform for the interaction of character and viewer. Contrasting imagery often propels the films, portraying subjects who exist within fragmented glimpses of a real and imagined life. These contradictions help us to examine the roles, often private but universal, represented by the footage and sound.

Inspired by Soviet and US propaganda films from the 1940’s onwards, as well as the Cinema Verité and New Wave movements, Salmon is drawn to portraying the common struggle of working class subjects. Looking at these films as time based portraits, the intention is to construct documents that represent characters and class in a social context.

Concerned with the connection between humans and nature, work and relaxation, family roles and class structure, these films move beyond the personalities portrayed and become studies of everyday activities and the life of the individual within their specific world.

MORE ON OLIVER BANCROFT: Oliver Bancroft (b. 1976 Cambridge, England) graduated in 2003 with an MA in Fine Art from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Solo and group exhibitions and screenings include: Chemical Effect, The Whitechapel, London; Brownfield, Lounge Gallery, London; Sleigh, Art & Business, curated by Studio 1.1, London; Zoo Art Fair 2006 and 2005, with Studio 1.1; Young Masters, Art Fortnight, London; Rough Diamond, Program, London; Recent Works, Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham; Life Should Be Full of Strangeness - Like a Rich Painting, Mount House Gallery, Marlborough; The World, Abridged, Kettles Yard, Cambridge; Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2004, at Barbican, London (2005); Light Reading, No.w.here Film Lab, London; Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2004, The Coach Shed, Liverpool; Projections and Paintings, Mount House Gallery, Marlborough; Affordism, Lounge Gallery, London; Drawing & Film on Paper, R.K.Burt Gallery, London; and Mutiny, The Bargehouse, OXO Wharf, London.

Most recently, Bancroft held his first London solo exhibition, Film/Painting at Studio 1.1, and earlier in the year he screened work as part of The Compendium 1 (Truth is Stranger than Fiction / Still Life) at Evolution 2006, Leeds. Bancroft has featured in Art Monthly and a-n Magazine and in the catalogue publications The World, Abridged, by Kettles Yard Publications (2005) and Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2004.

MORE ON FREEK DRENT & STELLA VAN VOORST VAN BEEST: Freek Drent (b. 1959) lives and works in the Netherlands. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: The Umbrella Factory, De Unie, Rotterdam and Filmfestival, Utrecht; Toys of Gloom, TENT, Rotterdam; Portraits, ram-foundation, Rotterdam; Collage, (in cooperation with Ron van der Ende) Delta Gallery, Rotterdam; DELAY, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Collage, TENT, Rotterdam; Collage, RAM, Rotterdam; Art Rotterdam and nieuwe edities: RAM, Rotterdam; Artstore, Rotterdam. Drent is currently undertaking a three-month residency in Shanghai, China.

Stella van Voorst van Beest (b.1963) lives and works in the Netherlands. She studied film at the Dutch Film & Television Academy in Amsterdam and Social History at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Van Voorst van Beest has worked collaboratively with Freek Drent on a number of installation projects, including: Toys of Gloom, Kunsthal Rotterdam; Toys of Gloom, Tent, Rotterdam; and Building Blocks, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam. She has directed a number of films including: 4 Seasons: Lithuania, Porc (with Freek Drent), When the Neighbour Sings, It’s Not Gonna Work..., Building Blocks (with Freek Drent), The Umbrella Factory (with Freek Drent), Melancholia I, Hook van Holland-Moscow, and Two Serious Men. Van Voorst van Beest has also worked as a Film Editor, a Film Programmer with Popifilm, Shadow Festival Unie and PEK festival in The Haag, and as a directing assistant with Stichting Moois Media and AS Films.

MORE ON ESTHER JOHNSON: Esther Johnson (b. Yorkshire, UK) graduated with an MA in Communication Art & Design from The Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Anthropology PocketScreenings, University College London; MadCat Film Festival, San Francisco, USA; Thailand Film Festival, British Council, Bangkok; Impakt, Utrecht, Netherlands; VideoClub, Brighton; Ennui, S1/Salon, Sheffield and touring to FACT, Liverpool; My Climate Change, Science Museum Dana Centre, London; IF3: Investigating Film, Side Cinema, Newcastle; Immediate 3, Site Gallery, Sheffield; Media Forum 05 - Moscow International Film Festival, Russia; Britspotting - British and Irish Film Festival, British Council in Berlin, Leipzig, Basle; UK Film Centre, Cannes Film Festival, France; Island Art Film and Video Festival, Prenelle Gallery, London; Solo Exhibition, Hull Time Based Arts; Recontres Internationales, Paris-Berlin; Microcinema International, San Francisco; Festival of New British Cinema, The Nova, Brussels; Halloween Film Festival, (Finalist for LUX Award for Best Film - Hinterland), ICA, London.

Her work has also featured in many film and video based publications, such as Dot Dot Dot, Vertigo, Filmwaves, Lab Magazine and Graphis CFE - New Talent Zone, New York, for whom she created a photographic project, Zone. In 2005 she was commissioned to produce Image is Everything, a web exhibition and essay, by AHRC British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection, at Central St. Martin’s, London. Johnson has undertaken several commissions, including Site Gallery, Sheffield and Hull Time Based Arts: her most recent film, Tune In, was funded by Arts Council England with support from Film London. Her work is held in prominent international film and video archive collections, including: VTape!, Toronto, Canada; The British Films Catalogue 2004 / 2005 / 2006, British Council; Yorkshire Film Archive, York Saint John College, UK; AHRC British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection, Central St. Martin’s, London; and Squeaky Wheel Artists’ Film and Video Archive, Buffalo, New York.

MORE ON MARGARET SALMON: Margaret Salmon (b. 1975, New York, USA) graduated in 2003 with an MA in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art, London after completing BFA Photography at The School of Visual Arts, New York in 1998. Earlier this year Salmon was the winner of the prestigious MaxMara Art Prize 2006, in association with the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Most recently she has undertaken residencies at the American Academy in Rome and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, in Biella, Italy.

Recent exhibitions include: Ramapo Central, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Printemps de Septembre a Toulouse, Fondation Espace Ecureuil, Toulouse; The Mind is A Horse, Part 2, Bloomberg Space, London; New Contemporaries 2004, Liverpool Biennial and Barbican, London; Stalker, Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago; Photography for People, For Us, Wallspace, New York; Urban and Suburban Stories, V.T.O., London; Holiday Shopping and Montebello Road, Wallspace, New York; and Sledge, The Jam Factory, London. Salmon’s work has also screened at: Galerie Der Stadt Schwaz, Vienna; Portobello Film Festival, Westbourne Studios, London; Fair Play Video Festival, Play Gallery for Still and Motion Pictures, Berlin; Video Screening 04, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna; and at the I.C.A., London, as part of Beck’s Futures Student Film & Video Award Exhibition, for which she won 2nd Prize.

Her work has recently received coverage in high profile publications such as Frieze, Shattered Magazine, Timeout London, Vogue (British), The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Observer and The Scotsman. In 2006, she has also been interviewed for radio and television, appearing on BBC Radio 4’s The Woman’s Hour, BBC 2’s The Culture Show, BBC Radio Northern Ireland, Arts Extra, and BBC LONDON television in a special report from the Whitechapel Gallery.

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Archepology

mit Oliver Bancroft, Freek Drent & Stella van Voorst van Beest, Esther Johnson, Margaret Salmon