New Contemporaries and ICA have invited exhibiting artists to select and introduce a film that has been formative, or a reference in their practice.
Wednesday 26 February, 2025
6.40 - 8.30pm, Cinema 1
£6 full price / £4 concession / Free for those with income support
This event accompanies the New Contemporaries exhibition at the ICA.
'Oh my country. I say over and over: I am one of your sons, it is true; I am, I am. Yet how shall I show my love?'
Alan Clarke’s 1973 television play Penda’s Fen has somewhat puzzlingly become a cornerstone of folk horror cinema, a genre in which it doesn’t really fit. The film follows Stephen, an 18-year-old boy based in rural England whose nationalism, identity and sexuality unravel through supernatural encounters with mythical figures and legends. Unlike other hits from the genre, the film’s focus is less interested in esoteric horror but instead in the fracturing of a patriotic arcadia that has engulfed the impressionable protagonist.
Through visions of long-dead kings, demons and even the composer Elgar, the English landscape and Stephen’s life are reshaped by folkloric and mythic history. The film’s subversion of nationalistic tropes through prehistory has been influential on Carmichael’s documentary practice in which local tradition frequently collides with contemporary concerns. In these films, local legend and customs augment and deconstruct issues of ecological devastation and communal tension.
Introducing Pendas Fen, Fergus will explore the film’s relationship to his own practice and consider its relevance within a wave of increased interest in folk custom and legend. Do current revivals offer renewed relationships with shared history and landscape or merely present a more palatable, escapist nationalism?
The Artist
Fergus Carmichael’s moving image practice explores contemporary interaction with tradition, landscape and folk culture. Employing durational case studies he investigates how communities seek to access spaces that engage with notions of local identity and interrogates the role which these narratives play within wider environmental and political climates.
Previous Exhibition
Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool