On The Move: Moving Image at Glasgow International

Enzo Camacho, Ami Lien
Offerings for Escalante

Offerings for Escalante, a new exhibition from Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, comprises two film elements – an hour-long experimental documentary and a 16mm stop-motion animation – in addition to handmade paper and a light-based installation. The title refers to a city on Negros, a plantation island in the Philippines that’s been the centre of Camacho and Lien’s research for the last few years. The duo describe the show as an “act of remembrance” for the horrifying Escalante Massacre of 1985, a brutal episode of state violence against workers protesting against conditions. Interweaving testimonials from the people of Negros along with organic materials and iconographies from the island, the artists aim to shed light on the significance of collective remembrance and mourning. The choice of GoMA, the former home of a tobacco plantation baron and subsequently a hub for trade exchange, as the exhibition’s venue should add an extra dimension when Offerings for Escalante comes to GI. GoMA, 7 Jun-1 Sep.

Camara Taylor
[mouthfeel]

Camara Taylor’s practice is concerned with archival documents and fragments of language. They’re particularly interested in Scotland’s entanglement with racial capitalism. Their GI show includes new and recomposed work which includes collaborations with artists 皚桐 (Ai Túng) and Sharif Elsabagh, and the Glasgow women's welding collective Slaghammers. The centre of the show is new moving image piece [mouthfeel], which imagines the last gold coin to be produced by the Scottish Mint as it dissolves on a tongue. That coin, incidentally, was minted in honour of the shameful Darien scheme, which was an unsuccessful attempt by Scotland in the late 17th century to establish New Caledonia, a colony in the Darién Gap in Panama. Tramway, 7 Jun-18 Aug.

Alexis Kyle Mitchell, Ima-Abasi Okon
Anticipate, sublimate

Several shows at this year’s GI see pairs of artists presenting work in conversation with each other, such as Anticipate, sublimate, which brings together the work of friends Alexis Kyle Mitchell and Ima-Abasi Okon. The moving image element of the show is Kyle Mitchell’s The Treasury of Human Inheritance, an hour-long film about the experience of living with and alongside disease and disability. The film blends footage of urban decay around Glasgow (a rich well to drink from), family home movies and hand-processed celluloid. Kyle Mitchell also worked with Luke Fowler and Richy Carey, who’ve created an analogue synthesiser soundtrack that mimics inheritance patterns of genetic disease. Kinning Park, 7-23 Jun.

Seeing Red, Owain Train McGilvary

Bobbi Cameron, Owain Train McGilvary
I’m attended as a portal myself

Another two-person show, the intriguingly titled I’m attended as a portal myself sees friends Bobbi Cameron and Owain Train McGilvary present sister installations joined via 'an architectural intervention'.

Cameron’s work, for the first words of a dreamworld, is a 16mm film that works as an act of time travel. “I am comparing my own experiences of Celtic shamanic practices to the experiences of my grandfather (and others) with dementia to explore what it means to exist in multiple places at once,” Cameron says of the work. The 16mm film is a collaboration with cinematographer Margaret Salmon, composer Richy Carey, movement artist Aniela Piasecka and shamanic practitioner Ruth McCauley, and the result blends deep listening practices, field recording and Celtic shamanism as a celebration of non-linear and multi-versal communications.

Train McGilvary, meanwhile, continues his interest in working-class queer spaces with Seeing Red, which attempts to reanimate North Wales’s only gay bar, which was burned down in an arson attack over a decade ago. Train McGilvary’s video work blends digital archive with interviews with former patrons that he’s tracked down to create a bilingual tribute to this lost institution. His room will also feature additional drawings lamenting lost queer history.

Taken together, I’m attended as a portal myself offers a duel window exploring memories of rural culture, with the moving image acting as the dreamy conduit to communicate with and explore these lost histories. 5 Florence Street, 7-23 Jun.

Descants. Image: Anne-Marie Copestake, Emmie McLuskey, Duncan Marquiss

Anne-Marie Copestake, Emmie McLuskey, Duncan Marquiss
Descants

If you prefer to take in your moving image work in the cinema space, then be sure to make it along to Descants from Anne-Marie Copestake, Emmie McLuskey and Duncan Marquiss, which will have a one-off screening at Glasgow Film Theatre as part of GI. The film was commissioned as a way of documenting the GI festival in 2021, which took place under various COVID restrictions. The aim of the film is that it would act as a “community portal” mapping conversations between artists, both local and far-flung, in the programme. The filmmakers describe it as a “record of local history as it unfolded, revealing individual and collective values and desires,” and it should act as a fascinating window into how artists were feeling, thinking and working during pandemic conditions. Glasgow Film Theatre, 23 June, 2pm.