Abigail Sidebotham

Abigail Sidebotham

Abigail Sidebotham’s research based films are metaphysical reflections on how we relate to the natural world.

Landscapes embedded with the scars of time and everyday stories of historical events are reinterpreted to formulate the narratives of Abigail Sidebotham’s films.

Abigail Sidebotham graduated from the RCA in 2013 with an MA in Fine Art and has since exhibited internationally. Selected exhibitions and screenings include; HotShoe Gallery, UK, Altitude 1000+ Festival, Switzerland, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Czech Republic, Victoria Art Centre, Romania, CSU, Slovakia, Arti et Amicitiae, Holland, KASK, Belgium, Les Recontres International, Gallery Civica, Italy, FID Marseille and Whitechapel Gallery, UK.

She is currently developing a film based on her research surrounding the Sea Empress oil spill that interweaves the disaster with the practice of reiki to explore our animistic relationship and cathartic desires surrounding the event.

Tattered Rocks

HD Video / 15:38 min / 2015

An artist film and musical proposition set in the surreal and exploited mineral landscape of an abandoned copper quarry in Wales. ‘Tattered Rocks’ interweaves narrative forms of essay, documentary and fiction film, to explore aesthetics, and the technological sublime in contemporary reality, and presents music as a powerful sense dynamic existing outside the realms of human cognition.

Two artefacts found at the site of the copper quarry appear as motifs throughout the film; a plastic bottle shot through with bullets and the bone-like remains of a car steering wheel. Through the use of macro photography, special effects, and 3D scanning the objects are portrayed as archaeological finds, taking us from history to prediction and serving as a meditation on materiality, digitality and the sublime.

Appearing in part as documentary, the film depicts musician Aino Tytti and his assistant installing an instrument – comprising of a 100 metre piano wire – stretched out across the quarry. In an act of sonic archaeology, the instrument enables him to detect and harness hidden ancient sound frequencies.

Auditorium

HD Video / 21:20 min / 2014

Set in 2094 China, “Auditorium” is a lament on human kind, told from the perspective of an artificial God drifting at the threshold of planet earth.

Her Name is Herman

Video / 15:07 min / 2013

In 1976 an unexploded German bomb known under the name ‘Herman’ was found at the Gower Peninsula in Wales, weighing one ton and with a length of 2.5 meters. The actual story of its diffusing serves for Abigail Sidebotham as a catalyst for numerous other interpretations, which are loosely woven together in her fifteen minute video. Sidebotham recounts the story in her own way, as an accomplished writer, and the gigantic Nazi bomb hidden deep below the ground becomes a symbol of a broader sort of Holy Grail: the masculine principle of conquest is confronted with a mysterious and menacing superpower, carrying within itself the attributes of an apocalyptic pregnancy. This seemingly marginal story from the recesses of 20th century attains through lengthy scenic shots and slow – weighted sentences almost mythological proportions.

Pavel Vancat, Startpoint Residency, Czech Republic