Australian Centre for Photography, 257 Oxford Street, Paddington, 9332 1455
Saturday 28 April 2007, 6.30pm
MIKE LEGGETT
expanded screen, performed film, structural film 1970-1981
Sydney’s Teaching and Learning Cinema will present some film and video works by Sydney-based British born artist Mike Leggett.
Mike Leggett has been making art with film and video since the early 70s. He was a foundation member of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op Workshop, established in 1969. The film labs in the workshop were the platform for key creative output of its era, Mike’s early films using the Workshop labs to explore the physical parameters of film, foregrounding their structure within a system of representation. Included in the program is his seminal 1971 work Shepherd’s Bush.
Mike collaborated and taught with intermedia artist Ian Breakwell in the early days of performance art in Britain. In 1970, Mike and Ian made Unword, a film based on a series of performances. It was not until 2003 that Mike and Ian realised the work in its intended form – cost limitations made finishing it impossible at the time, yet easily done in 2003 with contemporary technology. A startling black and white energy-filled evocation, Unword is in the collection of the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds City Museum and will receive its Australian premiere at the ACP.
Two films in the program, Erota Afini (1973) and Vistasound (1981), use a rigorous metrical image structure to investigate the scope of readings of cinematic images. Erota Afini comes to us from the Lux archive in London and its screening involves a ‘performance for projectionist’. Vistasound (in a never-before-seen 3-screen version), will be installed in the ACP galleries between 6pm and 7.30pm. Also on the bill is the Standard 8 1968 work Three Women of Bristol, a film thought long lost, re-discovered in 2006.
We are very pleased to be able to present Mike’s film-performance-lecture Image Con Text, as it resonates strongly with the aims of the Teaching and Learning Cinema: that watching films should be a discursive activity - cinema should not merely be passive consumption of moving images.
The screening is hosted by the Teaching and Learning Cinema. For specific details see the websites:
www.teachingandlearningcinema.org,
www.acp.au.com.
For further information contact Louise Curham louise@teachingandlearningcinema.org 0412 271 612