Anna Lucas: Lamps and Lurchers

Anna Lucas is an artist/filmmaker increasingly recognised for her film and video installations that transform daily experience into epic drama or sensual intimacy. In 2002 Lucas was the Henry Moore Fellow at Spike Island, Bristol, where she presented her video installation Bud in April 2003 (touring to 2003 Melbourne International Arts Festival). She has produced numerous films working with subjects and collaborators: The Space Between Your Mind and Eyes (2001, commissioned by Ikon Gallery, Birmingham); Viva Great Yarmouth! (2000, collaboration with poet John Cooper Clarke); and Just a Moment (1999, Prema Arts Centre residency). She was commissioned by Picture This and Knowle West Media Centre to make a film about a youngsters at the Knowle West estate in Bristol supported by the Film Council First Light initiative and Aardmans.

Lucas began the project by travelling about the estate visiting places where young people hang out. The final work is a portrait of unsupervised moments of escape and contemplation for a group of kids living on the edge of the city. Tales of riding, rabbiting and pet barn owls reveal an unexpectedly rural contrast to the crisp architecture of their housing estate, provoking conventional perceptions of urban youth.