Location: Amphitheater Gallery
13 March–16 June 2024
Opening Artist Reception | 5.30pm Friday 15 March 2024
Footsteps draws exclusively from films made between 1896 and the late 1920s found in the Eye Filmmuseum's archive in Amsterdam. As was common in pre-colour production, black-and-white film has been tinted, toned, and carefully hand coloured. Tan collaborated with the sound designer Hugo Dijkstal on the soundscape for this piece, augmenting the originally silent footage. Tan pairs mesmerising moments of people working over a century ago – sewing fishing nets, harvesting wheat, collecting chicken eggs, sorting oysters – with missives from her Australia-based father, whom we only know as Pap, read aloud by Scottish actor Ian Henderson. He wrote these tender, thoughtful notes between 1988 and 1990, towards the end of his career as a geologist, when Tan was an art student new to the Netherlands. This one-sided, rhythmic correspondence creates a meditative space for the viewer, as time moves forward.
The Museum of the Moving Image will be hosting a reception on 15 March which will include a conversation between Tan and curator, Sonia Epstein.
Please RSVP via the link to attend.
Organised by Sonia Epstein, Curator of Science & Technology.
