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“Historical imagination gathers in the missing,” writes the poet Susan Howe; and “Documents resemble people talking in sleep. To exist is one thing, to be perceived another”; and “I wish I could tenderly lift from the dark side of history, voices that are anonymous, slighted—inarticulate.” Echoes of these sentiments—which probe the silences and ellipses of official knowledge—what we can see, or not, why and how—gather in the dark corners and temporal folds of Scott’s films. The artist’s multilayered and enigmatic constructions skirt the margins of what can be seen, known, preserved. In each work, the technologies of sound and image—specifically film, 16mm—are an integral part of the equation, as if history itself is buried deep within each medium, part and parcel of every emanation. Scott deftly shows how these can be manipulated—falter, degrade, morph, stutter, transform, surprise, come together to make something newly conscious of formal and structural possibility. And always the question: what is the guiding thread, what spools the reels of these works that seem to proceed according to some submerged yet clarified logic?

[Emily LaBarge, ‘The Invisible Score’, LUX New Artist Focus, 2021]

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Frances Scott (b. 1981, Barrow-in-Furness, based in London, UK) is an artist working with moving image. Her work considers the narratives and histories at the periphery of cinematic production and its apparatus, to produce films composed of their metonymic fragments. Her projects are often made in exchange with other specialists, groups and publics, and developed through research using online and physical archives and collections. She associates and composites diverse materials, analogue and digital film media, to create intricate scenarios that are both scripted and improvised.

Her film work, informed by this collaborative and research-led process, takes multiple forms, through exhibitions to installations, screenings, events, broadcasts and publications, including presentations at TACO!, London; Curzon Soho, London; BFI, London; Curtocircuíto – International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela; Museum of Design in Plastics, Bournemouth; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin at the Louvre, Beaux-Arts de Paris, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Matt’s Gallery, London; Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester; 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; 67. and 68. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; transmediale, HKW and CTM, Berlin; South Kiosk, London; ‘Unsung Stories: Women at Columbia Computer Music Center’, CMC, Columbia University, New York; 57th New York Film Festival; Close Up Film Centre, London; Het Bos, Antwerp; The Bower, London; Tate St Ives, Cornwall; Annely Juda Fine Art & The Russian Club, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Yorkshire Sculpture Park & Art Licks; South West Film & Television Archive, Plymouth; Focal Point Gallery, Southend; and videoclub / FLAMIN screenings at Anthology Film Archives, New York, Seattle International Film Festival, and LA Film Forum.

Between 2012 - 2018 her practice included CATALOG, a collaborative project with Joyce Cronin. Frances was recipient of the Stuart Croft Foundation Moving Image Award [2017], and associate artist at the Moving Image Research Centre [MIRC], University of East London [2018-2019]. She graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art [2003] and Wimbledon College of Art [2010].

Her recent work Wendy [2023], was made in collaboration with filmmaker and sound designer Chu-Li Shewring, as a film response to the work of composer, electronic music innovator and polymath, Wendy Carlos. The project includes a book Incantation, Wendy [2021], published by An Endless Supply, with contributions from Beth Bramich, Valentina Formenti, Stine Hebert, Juliet Jacques, Tom Richards, Chu-Li Shewring and Dave Tompkins. Her films are distributed by LUX.

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CONTACT >

frances@abyme.org.uk . X . instagram

Images: Diviner [2017], film still