5 February, 5 pm, Gallery Augusta

HIAP presents a screening of three films by Katie Goodwin. Included are her first and second 16mm films Lightness (making its world premiere!), Kaamos (the film she has been shooting whilst at the residency) and the 3D film Small Wonders. The screening takes place on Wednesday, 5 February at 5 pm in Gallery Augusta.

Lightness explores the wonders of the night sky and the challenges of seeking such wonders in the UK, due to burgeoning light pollution. A sometimes philosophical and poetic view of the world told by the Royal Observatory astronomers, Tom Kerrs and Marek Kukula, is interwoven with stories and footage of the Glenachulish crew operating the community-owned tourist ferry which runs between Glenelg, a community trying to attain Dark Skies status, and the Isle of Skye. Lightness portrays the struggle between our modern urban life of safety and compartmentalisation and our inherent need to connect with nature and experience those magical moments that stay with us forever.

Katie has been shooting her second 16mm film Kaamos over winter 2014–15 whilst on a residency at HIAP on Suomenlinna Island in Helsinki and up in the north of Lapland where it is polar night. Kaamos is an abstractive narrative film made whilst the artist dwells in darkness.

Small Wonders follows microbiologist Terence Preston’s 50 year journey into discovering how single-celled organisms move. The film provides a charming and often funny insight into this hidden amoebae world juxtaposing their alien existence to our human experience. The film uses a hypnotic 16mm film of a ground breaking experiment shot through a microscope by Preston in 1972, combined with cine footage from the family archive of late filmmaker Ivor Beddoes.

About the artist

Katie Goodwin is a London-based British-Australian artist working mainly in moving image. A graduate of London’s Goldsmiths and Wimbledon Colleges of Art, she has exhibited in Tate Modern, ICA, Barbican (London), Site Gallery (Sheffield), T-A-P (Southend), and further afield at CAST Hobart, MADA Gallery (Melbourne), WRO Biennial (Wroclaw) and National Museum (Port of Spain). Prominent exhibitions include New Contemporaries (2011) and 971 Horses & 4 Zebras. Her first solo show at ArtLacuna (2013, London), screened the Welcome Trust funded 3D film Small Wonders. Katie has a background working in visual effects on feature films, including several Harry Potters. This very much informs her practice, blending old and new technologies of cinema, attempting to reveal hidden labour and otherwise lost gems that would otherwise have been considered waste.

Katie Goodwin’s residency is supported by the Australian Council for the Arts and the British Council’s International Development Fund.