Emvergeoning

For Contemporary Art Month 2010, Sala Diaz welcomes London film and video artist John Smith. John will screen three different 90 minute programs anthologizing 20 films spanning his work from the seventies to the present, including his recently completed Hotel Diaries series. This will be John’s first exhibition in Texas. A tandem lecture/screening will take place at the Ft. Worth Modern on Tuesday, February 23. http://www.themodern.org/lectures.html

Opening night, Friday, February 26, 3 different 90 minute programs be will shown at 7:30, 9:00 and 10:30 PM. Subsequent showings throughout Contemporary Art Month will be shown on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, at 2:00, 3:30 and 5 PM.

A preview screening of John’s 28 minute collaboration with Graeme Miller, Lost Sound, will be included in the always engaging offerings at Sam’s Video Jam, Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E. Grayson, Tuesday, February 23, at 8 PM.

“In film after film, Smith explores the cracks within and the tribulations of the world he confronts everyday, taking a closer look at and often transforming (verbally, associatively, just by observing from a different angle) things like a pane of glass, the discolorations of a moldy ceiling, a hospital water-tower, the archaeology of an ancient toilet, an old shepherd’s proverb, or a work he was unhappy with some 20 odd years before. In the process, he makes us look more closely, not just at his films and the cinema generally, but our own surroundings, the everyday world that engulfs us but that we probably routinely dismiss as a suitable subject for contemplation, art and imagination.”

— On the Street where You Live: The Films of John Smith by Adrian Danks, Senses of Cinema, 2003

“John Smith has always been an awkward case in British experimental film, not least because he has been that peculiar beast – a humorist. But like his forebears the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton, Smith’s humor is grounded in a profound understanding and playful subversion of the film medium itself. One of the most talented filmmakers of the postwar generation, he has attracted admirers from way beyond the narrow confines of the Avant Garde. His reputation rests on a quite unique sensibility which has successfully married three traits – humor, documentary and formal ingenuity — into an indissoluble whole.”

— Michael O’Pray, Art Monthly, 2002

http://www.johnsmithfilms.com/

Program 1: 7:30 pm

Associations (7 mins. 1975)

The Girl Chewing Gum (12 mins. 1976)

Om (4 mins. 1986)

The Black Tower (24 mins. 1985-7)

Slow Glass (40 mins. 1988-91)

(total running time 87 mins.)

Program 2: 9:00 pm

Gargantuan (1 min. 1992)

The Kiss (collaboration with Ian Bourn, 5 mins. 1999)

The Waste Land (5 mins. 1999)

Lost Sound (collaboration with Graeme Miller, 28 mins. 1998-2001)

Worst Case Scenario (18 mins. 2001-3)

Blight (14 mins. 1994-6)

Regression (17 mins. 1998-9)

(total running time 88 mins.)

Program 3: 10:30

Hotel Diaries series:

Frozen War (11 mins. 2001)

Museum Piece (12 mins. 2004)

Throwing Stones (11 mins 2004)

B & B (6 mins. 2005)

Pyramids / Skunk (17 mins. 2006-7)

Dirty Pictures (14 mins. 2007

Six Years Later (9 mins. 2007)

(total running time 82 mins)