Catriona Gallagher has been with VARC since July on her 10 month ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. residency and so it is around this time that we’d normally be welcoming you to Highgreen for an open studio event. As we are currently unable to host this in person, Catriona will be recording a virtual open studio tour which you can watch online and then join us for a live chat afterwards. 

This event will take place on Weds 30th September, 10am-11am. Please email helen@varc.org.uk to register your interest. On registering, you will also receive access to an exclusive showcase of Catriona’s films.

ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. 

Over the ten months in Northumberland, I will be researching perceived categorisations of the natural, manmade and wildness. I will be looking at systems of knowledge, control and management of nature locally, identifying such traces in the landscape alongside more collaborative practices and rituals performed on the land. Working with local people will be key and I’m hoping to develop collaborations with performers to include local voices, dialects and bodies. Mapping such patterns, whether physical or informational, will constitute my beginnings in drawing and writing, which I anticipate will progress into moving image over the course of the residency. I plan to begin with an open ended approach to the Ecology of Place and see what strikes me as pertinent and holds my interest when immersed in the locality.

Perdikaki was awarded Special Mention in the Short Films Competition at the New Holland Island International Debut Film Festival 2020!

 14-28 August 2020 Online edition 

“A poetic journey through the concrete cityscape of Athens in search of a mystery that may not exist, though the journey is no less real for it. Catriona Gallagher has a rare attentiveness to the environment: few directors, even those working in the travelogue essay genre, would be able to build an entire film around the search for an urban weed which everyone has seen but no one knows the name of. Here, poems, as Akhmatova wrote, grow shamelessly in trash.” - NHIFF

Films in Competition 11. 13:00, 28th March 2020. Online edition.

Pilot events from October 2019 onwards, screening discussions once per month 

The Artist’s Film Network is a new organisation which facilitates discussion and support structures between filmmakers and artists making moving image in Athens. The makers’ circle holds screenings of work in progress and near complete films/videos once a month, where artists can present work, share ideas, and receive support, critique and feedback. Screenings will be held in different venues, project spaces and homes each session and are informal and closed screenings for filmmakers and artists only; those who discuss others’ work are equally encouraged to show their own work and vice versa. The supporters’ circle extends to individuals and organisations who curate, facilitate or exhibit artist’s moving image work, for which more formalised events and screenings will be programmed further into the future.