Headfirst Editor's Pick
"Free entry! Spike Island’s latest presents two moving image exhibitions exploring heritage and representation. Danielle Dean’s ‘Hemel’ is a horror-inspired reimagining of Hemel Hempstead’s past through archive footage and speculative narrative, while Dan Guthrie’s ‘Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure’ examines British blackness through interrogations of material culture and tradition."
Join the Headfirst mailing list for our unbiased recommendations.
A event held at Spike Island on Friday 7th February. The event starts at 18:00.
DANIELLE DEAN
SOLO EXHIBITION
Dean’s exhibition at Spike Island centres around Hemel, a new film that serves both as a personal essay and a portrait of Hemel Hempstead, where she grew up. The film explores the town’s history as a planned community established under the New Towns Act of 1946. Archive footage and images of the town today interweave with references to a 1957 sci-fi horror B-movie shot there about the arrival of a non-human entity that infiltrates the minds of residents and endangers life with a toxic black slime. In the film, Dean takes on a composite role inspired by both herself and the movie’s detective protagonist, blending real and imagined worlds to examine the town’s past and present.
Accompanying Hemel is a series of drawings that capture the dystopian atmosphere that permeates the film and its characters, further immersing viewers in the unsettling world Dean constructs.
DAN GUTHRIE
EMPTY ALCOVE / ROTTING FIGURE
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is a new commission and solo exhibition by artist Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, with a particular interest in examining how these manifest in rural areas. His latest commission continues his ongoing exploration of the Blackboy Clock; an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire.
The clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a local watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed niche on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock has undergone restorations in 1977 and 2004 and has remained a constant presence throughout Guthrie’s life in Stroud.
Guthrie’s exhibition presents two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock—a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so. A new online platform documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future, will launch at earf.info.
This exhibition is produced and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol.
DANIELLE DEAN
Danielle Dean is an artist based in Los Angeles. Dean received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BFA from Central St Martins in London. She is also an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has recently produced Amazon (Proxy), a performance for Performa New York, (2021), Amazon, a new commission and solo exhibition at Tate Britain, London, as part of the Art Now series (2022). Other solo shows include: Long Low Line, Time Square Arts, New York (2023); Bazar at the ICA San Diego (2023); and True Red Ruin at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2018). Dean participated in the 2022 Whitney Biennale in New York. Other group exhibitions include: This is Land, Contemporary Austin (2023); Freedom of Movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018); The Centre Cannot Hold, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2018); and Made in L.A., The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014).
DAN GUTHRIE
Dan Guthrie is an artist who often works with the moving image to explore representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness with an interest in examining how they manifest themselves in rural areas. Recent presentations of his work include Prismatic Ground, Berlinale Forum Expanded, the Independent Cinema Office and LUX’s Right of Way screening tour.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
SOLO EXHIBITION
Dean’s exhibition at Spike Island centres around Hemel, a new film that serves both as a personal essay and a portrait of Hemel Hempstead, where she grew up. The film explores the town’s history as a planned community established under the New Towns Act of 1946. Archive footage and images of the town today interweave with references to a 1957 sci-fi horror B-movie shot there about the arrival of a non-human entity that infiltrates the minds of residents and endangers life with a toxic black slime. In the film, Dean takes on a composite role inspired by both herself and the movie’s detective protagonist, blending real and imagined worlds to examine the town’s past and present.
Accompanying Hemel is a series of drawings that capture the dystopian atmosphere that permeates the film and its characters, further immersing viewers in the unsettling world Dean constructs.
DAN GUTHRIE
EMPTY ALCOVE / ROTTING FIGURE
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is a new commission and solo exhibition by artist Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, with a particular interest in examining how these manifest in rural areas. His latest commission continues his ongoing exploration of the Blackboy Clock; an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire.
The clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a local watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed niche on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock has undergone restorations in 1977 and 2004 and has remained a constant presence throughout Guthrie’s life in Stroud.
Guthrie’s exhibition presents two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock—a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so. A new online platform documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future, will launch at earf.info.
This exhibition is produced and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol.
DANIELLE DEAN
Danielle Dean is an artist based in Los Angeles. Dean received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BFA from Central St Martins in London. She is also an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has recently produced Amazon (Proxy), a performance for Performa New York, (2021), Amazon, a new commission and solo exhibition at Tate Britain, London, as part of the Art Now series (2022). Other solo shows include: Long Low Line, Time Square Arts, New York (2023); Bazar at the ICA San Diego (2023); and True Red Ruin at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2018). Dean participated in the 2022 Whitney Biennale in New York. Other group exhibitions include: This is Land, Contemporary Austin (2023); Freedom of Movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018); The Centre Cannot Hold, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2018); and Made in L.A., The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014).
DAN GUTHRIE
Dan Guthrie is an artist who often works with the moving image to explore representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness with an interest in examining how they manifest themselves in rural areas. Recent presentations of his work include Prismatic Ground, Berlinale Forum Expanded, the Independent Cinema Office and LUX’s Right of Way screening tour.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Tickets for similar Bristol events.
