Garden Nights: an evening of film, video and music

Type

Events

Format

In the Building

Date 26 Aug 2022
19:00-22:00

Price £4/£5

Not the wick, nor the candle, but the burning.

Organised by George Finlay Ramsay

Alexander Hetherington
George Finlay Ramsay
Rebecca Salvadori & Sandro Mussida
Coby Sey
Mark Thomson

Camden Art Centre are pleased to present an evening of film, video, poetry and music that splices together ideas around family, inheritance, and ancestral myth. The event is organised by George Finlay Ramsay and features contributions by Coby Sey, Rebecca Salvadori & Sandro Mussida, Alexander Hetherington, and Mark Thomson.

The event’s title is appropriated from the diary of Ramsay’s ancestor, Katherine Atholl, the first female MP in Scotland, who wrote ‘For me, life is not the wick, nor the candle, but the burning’. Ramsay’s ethnographic history is explored further in his new film Family Fugue (2022) – a contrapuntal work in three movements with performances from multiple family members. The narrative spans 800 years and features a white snake, a red Duchess, and a golden boy.

Alongside this work, Rebecca Salvadori will showcase the video work Portraits of friends (2022), developed in tandem and inspired by Sandro Mussida’s new album, Rueben. Coby Sey will present a new sound work that combines keyboard compositions with field recordings taken from his recent trip to Ghana for his grandfather’s funeral. Mark Thomson will perform a selection of recent poems, including an adaptation of the Ramsay family myth, The White Snake, whilst Alex Hetherington will present HOUSE (2019-2020), a silent 16mm film captured at the partially derelict site of Bannockburn House, which engages with themes around entropy and failure.

The Artists

George Finlay Ramsay is an artist working across poetry, ritual and analogue film. He is making plans to have his body burnt in a volcano after he dies.

Mark Thomson was born in Dundee. He left school at sixteen and worked on and off in factories or as a labourer on building sites for twenty years. In his early thirties, Thomson began to write down everything that had always gone on in his head and what went on around him, either in the schemes, in the pubs, in the city centre or on the streets. Once finished, Thomson knew he could never go back. His poetry is a testament to his passion and love of Dundee, its people and its language.

Coby Sey is a vocalist, musician and DJ from South East London who offers a shifting, disorienting vision of club music.

Rebecca Salvadori is a London-based visual artist. Salvadori’s videos take the form of visual compositions based on chance discoveries.

Sandro Mussida is a composer, cellist and curator based in London and Tuscany. Mussida’s work investigates forms of active listening, the identity of musical languages and traditional rites.

Alexander Hetherington makes 16mm films that observe encounters between artists, spaces, objects, materials, biographies, writing and time.