9 December 2023 - 24 March 2024
This major solo exhibition by Michelle Williams Gamaker, developed in collaboration with South London Gallery, premiered the artist’s newly-commissioned film Thieves, the first work of her Fictional Revenge series. The artist’s work responds to films watched during childhood, unpacked and seen anew over time, which raise important conversations about race, representation, identity and agency.
www.dca.org.uk/exhibition-archive/michelle-williams-gamaker/
Thieves evokes early cinema and Technicolor classics, blending practical and analogue methods of special effects with contemporary technology to combine past and present filmmaking. The film is projected surrounded by props, which draw from the film’s set, alongside cinema ephemera of the actor Sabu collected by Williams Gamaker since 2015.
For the first time, Thieves is shown alongside two film installations produced by the artist, The Bang Straws (2021) and The Eternal Return (2019), both part of the artist’s Fictional Activism trilogy. Collectively, the films come together to ask important questions about historic representations reverberating into our present day, and how this can be purposefully revisited and countered.
For the first time, Thieves is shown alongside two film installations produced by the artist, The Bang Straws (2021) and The Eternal Return (2019), both part of the artist’s Fictional Activism trilogy. Collectively, the films come together to ask important questions about historic representations reverberating into our present day, and how this can be purposefully revisited and countered.
Thieves was commissioned by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) with funding from Arts Council England, and co-commissioned with the South London Gallery (SLG) and Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). Additional support from: National Lottery through Arts Council England; The Foundation Foundation; and The British Academy and the Wolfson Foundation. The film was produced by FLAMIN and Keep Rolling Studios.