As If They Existed, 2015, 34”32’
Commissioned as part of a residency at Turner Contemporary, Margate, the film shows Felicity Allen making a series of Dialogic Portraits to consider age and recognition with older women who have in various ways contributed to possibilities for women artists. Sitters are: poet & philosopher Denise Riley; artist, Rose Wylie; curators Sandra Drew, Jenni Lomax, Lynda Morris; art historians Gill Perry, Griselda Pollock and Anne Wagner. Situated mostly in a studio with breathtaking views of the sea looking towards France and Belgium, an underlying theme is the ominous Brexit vote (2016) in Margate, a leading Brexit locality. Made with Tom Dale.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/143588438
The Disoeuvre no 1, 2019, 9’10”
Exhibited in Dark Energy, xhibit_Eschenbachgasse 11, Vienna, alongside Slidewalking, a film by Althea Greenan. The Disoeuvre no 1 is a tentative start to a series of films to consider the concept of the disoeuvre in the context of memoir. Made in dialogue with Greenan, it stems from an analogue slide show of undergraduate work from the 1970s, and muses on memory, technology, and the particular demands women students experienced in becoming artists. Subsequent films in the series are in production.
Figure to Ground – a Site Losing its System, 2021, 12’04”
As artist in residence with the academic research project ‘People Like You: contemporary figures of personalisation’ Felicity Allen developed a new series of Dialogic Portraits, to consider with sitters questions of traditional representation (such as portraiture) and ideas of the self associated with digital culture. Sitters are from many parts of the world with different citizenship status, exploring new technology’s relation to self as citizen and patrimony. The series of portraits and audio recordings made with the sitters form the basis for the film which is situated in Ramsgate’s former hoverport as an indicator of obsolete technology and a point of entry for many over millennia, including those locally acknowledged, the Vikings and St Augustine.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/527359904
changing language changing landscape, 2021, 3′
Made for Ikon Gallery online, responding to Birmingham Migrant Festival’s theme ‘Imagine’, made by Felicity Allen from her longterm association with Refugee Tales. With photographs by Allen from Refugee Tales 5-day summer walks, her portraits of refugees and their advocates, with David Herd reading from his own poetry and Simon Smith reading from John Clare’s. Edited by Melinda Bronstein.