writer/director: Michelle Williams Gamaker
producers: Lara Goodband (RAMM, Exeter) and Teresa Grimes (Tintype, London)
The Silver Wave, by critically-acclaimed moving image and performance artist Michelle Williams Gamaker, was commissioned by Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 2020 to celebrate the theme of ‘Untold Stories’. Inspired by objects from the Arctic region in RAMM’s collection, Gamaker tells the story of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman from Nome, Alaska, who became the sole survivor of a doomed expedition to Russia’s Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. The explorers were hoping to claim the island for the British Empire, but as the four men Ada travelled with fell ill and eventually died or disappeared in an attempt to seek help, she was left alone on the island.
Ada’s diary of this ill-fated voyage, are filled with thoughts of her young son Bennet, who she had had to leave behind in a care home. Extracts from this diary provide the dialogue to the film read by Iñupiat poet and writer Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen, from the Ugiuvamiut tribe.
producers: Lara Goodband (RAMM, Exeter) and Teresa Grimes (Tintype, London)
The Silver Wave, by critically-acclaimed moving image and performance artist Michelle Williams Gamaker, was commissioned by Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 2020 to celebrate the theme of ‘Untold Stories’. Inspired by objects from the Arctic region in RAMM’s collection, Gamaker tells the story of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman from Nome, Alaska, who became the sole survivor of a doomed expedition to Russia’s Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. The explorers were hoping to claim the island for the British Empire, but as the four men Ada travelled with fell ill and eventually died or disappeared in an attempt to seek help, she was left alone on the island.
Ada’s diary of this ill-fated voyage, are filled with thoughts of her young son Bennet, who she had had to leave behind in a care home. Extracts from this diary provide the dialogue to the film read by Iñupiat poet and writer Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen, from the Ugiuvamiut tribe.
This page includes key production images from the The Silver Wave. Below is a selection of images from my other commissioned films.
Production stills - creating weather phenomena from lighting, projection mapping and fake snow
VFX Specialist Sophie Bramley creates an aurora borealis lighting effect in conversation with Cinematographer Adam D J Laity
Sophie Bramley makes museum objects glow with an 'Aurora effect' using numerous coloured gels.
Curator Tony Eccles moves figurines from the Indian collection into view for the dream sequence: in the snowstorm Ada has visions.
Creating the explorer's base camp using projection mapping - Ada spots a polar bear on the horizon
Ada's visions in isolation: recent images of 'Eco-tourism' at Wrangel Island, projection mapped into the scene
Antidotes to loneliness: as the sun sets at base camp, Mexican Rain Gods appear as Ada kayaks past.
Examples of Previous Moving Image Commissions
Encore (Resurrection Manifestations), 2019 | Commissioned by Tintype for Essex Road 5 | Arts Council Funded
Single-channel video
2019 | HDV | Colour | Sound | 6"
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.
2019 | HDV | Colour | Sound | 6"
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.
The Eternal Return, 2019 | Supported by the Elephant Trust
Single-channel video with installation
2019 | HDV | Black-and-white | Sound | 16" | English
The Eternal Return explores the phenomenon of how a performer of colour such as international actor Sabu might be treated and thought of in a way analogous to the animals with whom he appears. In Sabu’s case this was the conflation of his background as mahout son’s with his career as actor that imposed a seemingly inescapable relationship with elephants: the animals recur throughout his filmography. It also highlights how, in spite of his extraordinary fame Sabu was always the sidekick and never the love interest. With the use of a combination of live-action dramatised recreation and re-edited British Pathé stock footage. The Eternal Return revisits the now-struggling Sabu in 1951 as he supports his family by performing – once more with a troupe of elephants – in Tom Arnold’s Christmas Circus in Haringey Arena.
2019 | HDV | Black-and-white | Sound | 16" | English
The Eternal Return explores the phenomenon of how a performer of colour such as international actor Sabu might be treated and thought of in a way analogous to the animals with whom he appears. In Sabu’s case this was the conflation of his background as mahout son’s with his career as actor that imposed a seemingly inescapable relationship with elephants: the animals recur throughout his filmography. It also highlights how, in spite of his extraordinary fame Sabu was always the sidekick and never the love interest. With the use of a combination of live-action dramatised recreation and re-edited British Pathé stock footage. The Eternal Return revisits the now-struggling Sabu in 1951 as he supports his family by performing – once more with a troupe of elephants – in Tom Arnold’s Christmas Circus in Haringey Arena.
House of Women, 2017 | supported by Mondrian Funds, purchased by Arts Council England
Single-channel video
2017 | 16mm to HDV | Colour | Sound | English
To cast Kanchi, Powell & Pressburger conducted a nationwide search. In all, almost 1000 hopefuls applied, with over 200 girls tested and interviewed. The coveted role went to seventeen-year-old Jean Simmons, who had won worldwide acclaim for her performance as Estella in Great Expectations (1946). To fulfil the role, she had to wear dark Panstick make-up and a jewel in her nose to become the “exotic temptress” of Rumer Godden’s novel.
In late 2014, I recast the role auditioning Indian ex-pat or first-generation British Asian women living in London. Shot on 16mm film, candidates had to introduce themselves to an anonymous reader, recite a personalised alphabet, which include references to the history of photography and gender politics and read lines from a script whilst seated and standing. During the recital, a digital image of the Himalayas appears within a masked out rectangle. It signals the modern medium to which Kanchi will enter in other works in the show.
2017 | 16mm to HDV | Colour | Sound | English
To cast Kanchi, Powell & Pressburger conducted a nationwide search. In all, almost 1000 hopefuls applied, with over 200 girls tested and interviewed. The coveted role went to seventeen-year-old Jean Simmons, who had won worldwide acclaim for her performance as Estella in Great Expectations (1946). To fulfil the role, she had to wear dark Panstick make-up and a jewel in her nose to become the “exotic temptress” of Rumer Godden’s novel.
In late 2014, I recast the role auditioning Indian ex-pat or first-generation British Asian women living in London. Shot on 16mm film, candidates had to introduce themselves to an anonymous reader, recite a personalised alphabet, which include references to the history of photography and gender politics and read lines from a script whilst seated and standing. During the recital, a digital image of the Himalayas appears within a masked out rectangle. It signals the modern medium to which Kanchi will enter in other works in the show.