Tintype is pleased to announce the sixth edition of its Essex Road program. Once more, it sees eight artists invited to make a short film in response to the eponymous, mile-long North London thoroughfare that snakes through Islington from Angel to Balls Pond Road, and where the gallery is also located.
The annual commission is recognised for its significance within the ecology of moving image arts in the UK, enabling eight artists each year to create new work. Since its inception six years ago, Tintype has commissioned 48 artists’ films, including works by Benedict Drew, Melanie Manchot and John Smith. These are back-projected into the gallery’s window and viewed from the street as a form of public art.
The driving force behind the project is the desire to work with outstanding artists, producing new work that is shown in an unusual context. Whilst the brief is very simple – to make a short film that responds to one London street – the results have been astonishingly diverse. Turning a prism onto a very specific locale has, perhaps counter-intuitively, encouraged a magnificently adventurous response.
For ESSEX ROAD 6, Tintype’s large window, situated on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for five weeks with the eight films screened on a loop every evening from 5 – 11 pm.
AYO AKINGBADE’s Hella Trees was filmed in the Colebrooke Row and Duncan Terrace Gardens, south of the Angel. It follows a young obsessive, Rafiki, whose artistic practice focuses on trees, their individuality and presence. The film segues into a laconic conversation about identity and wanting to confound stereotypes, inviting people to look closer and go beyond the obvious.
Akingbade is a young artist based in London. Her work to date has emerged from and mediates the urban environment, which she distils into highly personal, idiosyncratic narratives. She recently completed a social housing trilogy entitled No News Today. She is a recipient of the 2018 Sundance Ignite Fellowship and last year her work was selected for New Contemporaries.
