"Where We Are" Dual Exhibition From Tess Martin and Laury Hooghuis Opens This May

We have written about the animator and filmmaker Tess Martin before. And now she is back as her latest film Still Life with Woman, Tea and Letter will be screening as part of a joint exhibition at the Bouwput Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The short film is described as a unique still-life in motion. It was created combining multiple traditional stop-motion techniques. It was filmed in a single marathon 9-hour shoot that included time-lapse, replacement animation and pixilation.

The film explores two distinct moments in time. On a table in the present day, a woman reads a letter, next to it sits a photograph that becomes a window to the past. Both the table scene and the photograph are created through stop-motion, brought to life by meticulously repositioning real-life objects and actors. First Martin created the scene within the photo, filming an actor in a vintage kitchen, then turning this footage into a series of printed photographs. Later during a lengthy nine-hour shoot, the present day scene was created by capturing a new image every 30 seconds as the prop photograph was manually replaced in sequence. while Martin directed the movement of the second actor and props.

The film runs just 2 minutes and 15 seconds, but during that time a candle burns down and an entire day passes on screen. The young woman in the photograph comes to life and the film closes as she looks directly out to her older self and the viewer, "inviting us into a quiet, poignant moment of memory and imagination." Neither of the two timelines we have witnessed are fully 'real'. The young writer in the photograph moves in real-time, but remains trapped in the frame. The older woman's timeflow is distorted in a different direction as nine hours pass in the time it takes her to sit down. Does the woman's timeline move slower than her younger self's? In what reality do we, the viewer, find ourselves in? Are we more real than our younger or future selves?

The film will screen in the exhibition alongside Under Reconstruction, directed by Laury Hooghuis. The short was filmed in a building that is slowly being demolished. In the film, the building becomes something larger, something metaphysical, something more than a location. We follow three characters in the search for each other, or put differently, for themselves. “I love the idea that when our perspective changes, the world as we see it also changes,” says Laury. The film embodies the feeling of coming home and rediscovering oneself when everything around you has fallen apart. What remains is the core. Time in the film is not told linearly, but experienced; as you feel something, so too does time unfold in the film, emotionally. In image and sound, a subtle, promising moment takes shape that touches on something essential."

“I’m looking forward to exhibiting Still Life with Woman, Tea and Letter alongside Laury’s thoughtful and thematically related work,” says Tess Martin. “My film was produced as part of the Ultrakort program of the Netherlands Film Fund and has so far only been shown in cinemas. This is the first time it will be presented as an installation, where the viewer can stand close, examine the details, and watch the film multiple times.”

The exhibition allows a unique opportunity to see these two films in dialogue with each other and to view them more than once. Both films use repetition and minimalist pacing to convey an expansive sense of time.

The exhibition will open on May 9, with an opening event at 5.00 PM. Visitors are also welcome by appointment on May 7 and May 08- see the website for details on how to book.