The Screen
St. Catherine's RockEdwin Miles
11 March - 13 May 2023
Edwin Miles is a filmmaker from Worcestershire in the West Midlands, now based in South London. Using varied journeys around his immediate surroundings as a structural device, Edwin's work often explores the relationship between person and place, home and memory, while primarily being shot using Mini DV. Set against the backdrop of London's cityscape or the wider British landscape, his work presents a confluence of documentary-like images and a fictionalised narrative that navigate a psycho-geographical disorientation in an attempt to find some sense of belonging.
Edwin’s latest work, St. Catherine’s Rock, is the first of a series of films that recycles old home video shot on his Grandad’s camcorder. Bringing the camcorder’s VHS footage from 2002 together with Mini DV footage from 20 years later, the film presents brief windows into the past that evoke time, memory, perspective, and the importance (as well as the memorialisation) of place. In an attempt to break formal traditions, St. Catherine’s Rock combines images from past and present as they skip around the screen to formulate an on-screen geography, mapping perception and memory, creating a fractured and disjointed panorama.
Set over a week-long holiday, the film follows the family as they explore Manorbier Castle, Wiseman’s Bridge, or St. Catherine’s Island near South Beach in Tenby. Yet even as the haziness of the VHS or the softness of the contemporary Mini DV elicit the imperceptibility and the fragility of a memory, Pembrokeshire’s sands, its coloured buildings, its sun and the sea are unmistakable; it is a golden destination and one the family return to every year.
Image: Still from St. Catherine's Rock, Edwin Miles
