Sculpting in Film: The works of Tony Hill, a solo exhibition exhibition of work by Tony Hill (b.1946, London), an artist filmmaker whose experimental short films that are somewhere between sculpture and cinema. Having studied architecture, followed by sculpture at St. Martin’s College, Tony Hill became familiar with experimental cinema by attending screenings at the London Filmmakers’ Co-operative (LFMC) in the 1970s.
This vibrant space of experimentation, the birthplace of British Structural cinema, led him to conceive of film projection as a “sculptural event”.
Working with this idea, he began by creating semi-interactive projection environments. In one of his first projects, Floor Film (1975), the audience was to stand on top of a horizontally-placed screen, onto which were projected, via a mirror, images of other people filmed from below – leading the audience to feel an uncanny resemblance with the people they saw in the film. In his subsequent works, Hill continued to explore unusual performative and sculptural setups for filming and projection. The standard horizontal and two-dimensional cinematographic dispositif did not apply: “Some of my films could be shown upside down without changing them significantly.”
His films present entirely new ways of looking at the world in which we live. His extraordinary sculptural films turn and transform, squeeze and stretch the landscape and constantly challenge how we see what’s around us. They are films about perception, time and space but they are also films about the body and memory and being alive. Above all, they are constantly surprising and delightful and, often, funny. Many of the films have been created with specifically built camera rigs, and a selection of these is demonstrated in this richly illustrated interview with the artist. Among the works that Tony Hill discusses are Downside Up (1984) with its constantly orbiting viewpoint; Water Work (1987), which was shot on and just below the surface of a swimming pool; the sensual film Laws of Nature (1997); and the artist’s idiosyncratic portrait of Darlington Hall Estate in Devon, Camera Obscura (2000).
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Indeed, many of his films turn things on their head to challenge the “normal” perceptions of space and gravity, to present a child’s view of the world. To do this, Hill builds complex rigs that allow him to place the camera in seemingly impossible situations and carry out movements that appear to be at odds with the laws of nature. Certainly, there is a kinship between Tony Hill’s work and that of his contemporaries at the LFMC. Like Chris Welsby, Hill builds strange machines that allow them to record the landscape in unexpected ways through the inanimate gaze of the camera. One could also make parallels between some of his work, especially Downside Up (1984) and Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale (1971). However, what distinguishes Hill’s work is his strong attachment to the human figure: nearly all of his films include an element of portraiture. Through the tension between the human gaze and the mechanical one, the intimate portrait and the impersonal machine, his films produce an experience that is not only disorienting but also, sometimes, highly emotional.
His interest in filming people has also led to a large number of collaborations. Among the most recent ones is the Hotel Bardo project of Wistanley Schtinter, which was completed as part of Light Cone’s Atelier 105 residency in 2018 and for which Hill created a custom camera rig. Hill’s machines have also given him the opportunity to work on many commercial projects, such as, most recently, the music video A$AP Forever (2018) by the rapper A$AP Rocky.
Sculpting in Film: The works of Tony Hill was curated by Keith Whittle and Keith Whittle and Margherita Gramegna.
