Dad’s Stick 2012, 5 mins.
Dad’s Stick features three well-used objects that were shown to the filmmaker by his father shortly before he died. Focusing on these mysterious artifacts and events relating to their history, Dad’s Stick creates a dialogue between abstraction and literal meaning. Looking back over half a century, the work explores the contradictions of memory to create an oblique portrait of “a perfectionist with a steady hand”.
Museum Piece (Hotel Diaries #2) 2004, 12 mins.
While the Iraq war continues, a day’s sightseeing and the features of a German hotel provoke a stream of thoughts about events large and small. Museum Piece is the second video in the Hotel Diaries series, made over six years in the hotels of six different countries. In these works, which play upon chance and coincidence, the hotel room is employed as a ‘found’ film set, where the architecture, furnishing and decoration become the means by which the filmmaker’s small adventures are linked to major world events.
Throwing Stones (Hotel Diaries #3) 2004, 11 mins.
As the camera looks out through a barred window and the clock strikes four in a Swiss city, the death of Yasser Arafat provides the starting point for a journey back in time.
Flag Mountain 2010, 8 mins.
A view across the border in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. The camera looks over the rooftops of the Greek Cypriot south to the mountains of the Turkish Republic in the north, where a display of nationalism is enhanced by filmic means. Moving between macro and micro perspectives, Flag Mountain sets dramatic spectacle against everyday life as the inhabitants of both sides of the city go about their daily business.
Who Are We? 2016, 4 mins.
On the 23rd of June 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union. Who Are We? is a re-working of material from a BBC television debate transmitted a few weeks earlier.
Song for Europe 2017, 4 mins.
On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres below the seabed of the English Channel, shook the hand of construction worker Philippe Cozette of Calais and shouted, “Vive la France!”. On June 23rd 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union. Inspired by a message for motorists on Eurotunnel trains, Song for Europe is an underwater celebration of Britain’s connection to the mainland.
Jour de Fête 2017, 1 min.
During the last week of July the village of Serviès-en-Val in the South of France celebrates its annual fete. A stage is erected in the main square and fairground attractions are installed, sometimes in surprising locations.
Covid Messages 2020, 22 mins.
Covid Messages is a video in six parts, based around broadcasts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.
