Single-channel video (5 minutes) and C-Type prints
2018 | 59.4 cm x 42.0cm
"An usherette dressed in a grey velvet bellboy-style jacket and matching trousers lies asleep. Her hands clutch a black usherette tray, on which rests a pyramid of green popcorn... With a nod to David Lean’s 1945 film Blithe Spirit, which also conjured ghosts using innovative green make-up and lighting effects, Williams Gamaker sets her film in the palatial, ghostly art deco ex-cinema in Essex Road. Here, a lowly usherette brings two Hollywood starlets back to life with her glowing green popcorn."
This short film was commissioned for Tintype's Essex Road Project, annual commissions now recognised for their significance within the ecology of moving image arts in the UK – enabling eight artists each year to make new work. Over the past five years, Tintype has commissioned and produced 40 artists’ films, which are back-projected into the gallery’s window and viewed from the street as a form of public art.
2018 | 59.4 cm x 42.0cm
"An usherette dressed in a grey velvet bellboy-style jacket and matching trousers lies asleep. Her hands clutch a black usherette tray, on which rests a pyramid of green popcorn... With a nod to David Lean’s 1945 film Blithe Spirit, which also conjured ghosts using innovative green make-up and lighting effects, Williams Gamaker sets her film in the palatial, ghostly art deco ex-cinema in Essex Road. Here, a lowly usherette brings two Hollywood starlets back to life with her glowing green popcorn."
This short film was commissioned for Tintype's Essex Road Project, annual commissions now recognised for their significance within the ecology of moving image arts in the UK – enabling eight artists each year to make new work. Over the past five years, Tintype has commissioned and produced 40 artists’ films, which are back-projected into the gallery’s window and viewed from the street as a form of public art.
Essex Road is in the borough of Islington, London. It is roughly a mile long stretching from the Angel to Balls Pond Road. Essex Road runs parallel to its more upmarket neighbour Upper Street and in fact used to be called Lower Road. For ESSEX ROAD 5, I began to link spatial and temporal shifts of the Carlton Cinema; an Art deco Grade II* listed building (then Mecca Bingo) and its subsequent afterlives. The title of my film RESURRECTION MANIFESTATIONS speaks to the history of Carlton Cinema when it was purchased by an Evangelical Church: Resurrection Manifestation in 2013.
Michelle Williams Gamaker is represented by Tintype, London
ESSEX ROAD 5
DAVID BLANDY| MICHELLE DEIGNAN | RÄ DI MARTINO | DMITRI GALITZINE | JAYNE PARKER | HIRAKI SAWA | NICOLE VINOKUR |
MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER
13 December 2018 – 19 January 2019
www.tintypegallery.com/exhibitions/essex-road-5/
ESSEX ROAD 5
DAVID BLANDY| MICHELLE DEIGNAN | RÄ DI MARTINO | DMITRI GALITZINE | JAYNE PARKER | HIRAKI SAWA | NICOLE VINOKUR |
MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER
13 December 2018 – 19 January 2019
www.tintypegallery.com/exhibitions/essex-road-5/