Somewhere Else Entirely

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Andersen, E. ORCID: 0000-0002-3575-8757, 2023. Somewhere Else Entirely. Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, 24 March - 13 May 2023.

Information

Item Type:	Exhibition
Creators:	Andersen, E.
Publisher:	Nottingham Trent University
Place of Publication:	Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham
Date:	2023
Abstract:	This Spring the Bonington Gallery presented a new three-screen film installation by Emily Andersen featuring the American-born poet and writer Ruth Fainlight, who has become one of Britain’s most distinguished poets.Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City in 1931 and moved to England when she was 15. During a lifetime dedicated to writing she has produced numerous collections of poetry and short stories and translations. In 1959 she married the writer, Alan Sillitoe, and her many literary friendships included Sylvia Plath, Jane and Paul Bowles, and Robert Graves. Andersen’s film is an intimate portrait of Fainlight, now aged 91, presenting different fragments of the poet’s life. Fainlight is captured by Andersen at her home in London, making notes, on her walks, and in the seaside town of Brighton, with a photographer’s eye for composition and detail. Each image is carefully framed – Fainlight walking along the corridor, her green cardigan against green foliage, the booklined walls – and the film intentionally moves at a gentle pace, sometimes almost appearing to be a series of still images. In the film Fainlight talks off-screen, revealing fascinating insights into her life, her creative process, and how she is ‘in the hands of the poem’. Her intensely visual poetry and fiction touch on themes of time, memory, and loss – in the film she movingly recites her work ‘Somewhere Else Entirely’ composed after the death of her husband. Andersen has been a photographer for four decades. Her work includes interiors, architecture, and landscape but she is best known for her award-winning portraiture, capturing well-known faces including Nico, Peter Blake, and Helen Mirren. Somewhere Else Entirely is Andersen’s first completed film portrait and is inspired by her decade-long friendship with Fainlight. The exhibition also shares its title with Fainlight’s 2018 poetry collection which features Andersen’s photographs on the cover. The three-channel film will be shown on a 10.5 metre-wide curved screen within the gallery space. To accompany the exhibition there will be an in-conversation with Emily Andersen and Ruth Fainlight, and an evening of performative readings, using the film to reflect on the reciprocity of words and images, and the process of biography. The launch of the film in Nottingham is significant, as Fainlight’s husband Alan Sillitoe was famously from the city, and the couple met in a local bookshop. Andersen is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Visual Practice of Photography at Nottingham Trent University.
Event Location:	Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham
Event Dates:	24 March - 13 May 2023
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham School of Art & Design
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	23 May 2023 10:31
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2023 09:07
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49059