The Location

The Embassy had the capacity to seat 1,700 people and was the last cinema to be built in Gillingham, Kent. Today the cinema’s high ceilings and seating are hidden above a suspended ceiling. What remains to the visitor is a darkened snooker bar with low ceilings and no trace the Embassy’s former opulence.

While working in the bar in 2012 I discovered the disused area above. Empty rooms storing years’ worth of broken furniture and snooker related paraphernalia. The theatre space used for the projection is pitch black and has no electricity or lighting sources. Inspired by this darkened space I used photography lamps and flood lights to illuminate the space, later moving towards projection.

Themes and Ideas

Eadweard  Muybridge’s sequential photography draws one’s attention to the flow of movement, the natural progression of a multitude of minute actions. A fluidity which seems constantly to be contained, a dancer caught in an image, aquatic life restrained behind glass, birds in a cage.There is always a structure in which to place a movement, sketches of Tatlin’s tower reveal a mass of shape held taught on hardened lines. The Embassy’s suspended ceiling holding all activity below a weighty ceiling. The desire to bring movement back to this dark, quiet space resulted in a ten minute projection.The projection used two large scale projectors and exists now as a video.