The Screen
BreatheChris Bird-Jones / Malcolm Glover
17 November - 09 January 2021
Breathe is the result of photographer Malcolm Glover’s collaboration with Chris Bird-Jones. Bird-Jones invited Glover to work alongside her as she researched glass making in Firozabad, the heart of the glass industry in Uttar Pradesh, India. The two artists spent weeks in the chaotic (and highly dangerous) environment of the glass factories. The intention initially was to document the glass industry and its workers, however it soon became clear to both artists that they could make a more penetrating piece of work. The resulting video installation is a collection of portraits, with the subject of each standing still before a backdrop of furnaces, intense heat, cacophonous noise, and the frenzied pace of fellow workers undertaking their tasks with almost choreographic precision. The work celebrates the triumph of the individual and the subjects exude a strange serenity in compositions that are at times almost biblical, at others comical, and always deeply moving. As Bird-Jones puts it, “For us, the factories became a metaphor for India and her people...this is what we sought to convey in the work.”
Generously supported by Wales Arts International and the British Council India Wales Fund.
In 2019 Breathe was screened at A Wave of Dreams Arts Lab, St Leonard’s-on-Sea and at the launch of 51zero Festival 2019, the international moving image and contemporary art festival at Rochester Cathedral. This is the first screening of Breathe in Wales.
