With original music by Graham Massey, Northern Lights is a new work by Manchester based artist and film-maker, Chris Paul Daniels. Co-commissioned by Grundy Art Gallery and ICA Art and Screen Network, the film was shot on location at Lightworks, the Blackpool Illuminations Depot and makes its UK gallery debut at Grundy Art Gallery after recent screenings at Winnipeg Underground Film Festival and MAXXI in Rome.
An inquisitive voice from the far future, or ‘visitor from another place’, interrogates the traditions and artefacts of the Blackpool Illuminations, the annual light festival first established in 1879.
The disembodied voice seeks to understand, but often confuses, Northern English vernacular and traditions against the current shifting political dialogue surrounding Britain’s future. Known as a historic centre of working class seaside tourism, Blackpool’s unique fantastical fairground imagery can be universally identified as totemic remnants of a former era.
Daniels presents his own contemporary 16mm and super-8 film observations as a found archive, and a script littered with the same word-play commonly embedded in the landscape of seaside end-of-the-pier resorts; to try and decipher questions around England’s identity and the collective anxieties surrounding what the future holds.
TALK: Chris Paul Daniels will be giving an Artist’s Talk and Q&A on Saturday 27 October from 2 – 4pm. He will be joined by musician, Graham Massey. The event is free but booking is essential; to book call (01253) 478170.