Guy Sherwin: Light Cycles

Christine Park Gallery is honoured to present a special exhibition of 16mm film installations by London-based filmmaker, Guy Sherwin. Lasting two weeks only, this will be Sherwin’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. During the exhibition, the gallery will be transformed into a semi-darkened space where the visitor is invited to walk freely around the installations.

on Light Cycles

Seven 16mm film installations, each almost a still-life concentrated on a single object or quality of light. Light projects onto physical surfaces, a drawing, a mirror, a suspended paper screen. Several of the works originated within Short Film Series (1975-ongoing), an interconnected set of three-minute films, and have since been adapted in unique ways for looped presentation in the space of the gallery.

The exhibition extends ideas from Film in Space, an exhibition I curated for Camden Arts Centre (2012/3) in which UK works of 16mm expanded cinema, originally made for performance, were re-worked for the gallery.

Thanks to Lynn Loo for her support and to David Leister for looper equipment.

Guy Sherwin. February 2016.

About the Artist
Guy Sherwin studied painting at Chelsea School of Art in the late 1960s before becoming involved with the radical film practice of the London Film-Makers' Co-operative (now LUX) where he learnt, and then taught, the darkroom arts of printing and processing. His films explore fundamental material properties of film along with its unique capacity for recording elusive moments of light and time. Use of serial and rhythmic forms in both image and sound extend the possibilities of analogue film through installation and live performance.

Recent collaborations with artist Lynn Loo include performances of Live Cinema in which multiple projectors and optical sound (sounds made from light) are accompanied by improvised music. These works have been performed in Europe, North America and South East Asia.

Sherwin's films for single screen were included in the major surveys of artists’ film: ‘Film as Film’, Hayward Gallery (1979); ‘Live in Your Head’, Whitechapel Gallery (2000); 'Shoot Shoot Shoot', Tate Modern (2002); and ‘A Century of Artists’ Film in Britain’, Tate Britain (2003/4). Recent performances include Performa Biennale #13, New York (2013); Mujanhyang, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Seoul (2014); L'Age d'Or, Cinematek, Brussels (2015); and El Nicho Music Festival, Mexico City (2015).

His films are in the collections of Tate, Cinematheque Francaise, LUX London, LightCone Paris, Canyon Cinema San Francisco and British Artists' Film & Video Study Collection London. EYE Institute Amsterdam holds many of the 16mm archive masters.

Sherwin was guest curator for Camden Arts Centre of Film in Space, a gallery exhibition of expanded cinema that ran from December 2012 to February 2013. Solo gallery exhibitions include Movements in Light, Siobhan Davies Studios, London (2011) and Vitrine Series: Camden Road Station, Atopia Gallery, Oslo (2011).

The artists' film agency LUX (London) has published three DVD/book collections of his work: Short Film Series 1975-2014 (1975-ongoing), Messages (2010), Optical Sound Films 1971-2007 (2007).

Sherwin lives in Hackney, London. He teaches at the Universities of Wolverhampton and Middlesex and has run classes in artist film at the San Francisco Art Institute. Further information on his work is on the Luxonline website.

For enquiries, please contact us at info@christinepark.net