Independent Cinema for Everyone

Image: After Leonardo, Malcolm Le Grice, 2016. Photo: Josh Huxham

This evening I had the privilege of attending a performance of After Leonardo by Plymouth-born Artist Malcolm Le Grice and Keith Rowe at the Peninsula Arts Gallery, located within Plymouth University. As an attendee to the breath-taking show, I found myself surrounded by a large audience of other artists and members of the university who felt captivated once the performance began.

Malcolm Le Grice is known as a pioneer in the field of experimental performance art involving the multi-screen process and projection methods of installation. After studying painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, Le Grice became infatuated by the art of film-making and began his path as someone who explores the medium of moving image.

Image: Horror Film, Malcolm Le Grice, 2016. Photo: Josh Huxham

This evening Le Grice partnered up with Keith Rowe who accompanies the two performances with alluring and hypnotizing melodies. Beginning with a performance of Horror Film 1, the live shadow performance explored the technique of using different hues of colour and tone whilst combined with the use of 16mm projectors.

As the film-maker stood in front of the projector, his figure and emotion began to manifest and increase in its capacity, concluding with the performers figure completely consuming the projected space. After a short break, the next performance began to take place.

This performance explored two themes, the world-famous painting of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci and Freud’s psychoanalytic monograph of the mind. Entitled After Leonardo, this performance piece has continued to develop over time.

The use of projectors increased for this particular performance, allowing the audience to see a wider perspective of the subjects being transported from the projectors onto the wall being used as a canvas. This performance saw the film-making engaging with the moving images upon the wall, creating a balance between three-dimensional and two-dimensional mediums.

By Josh Huxham