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Synopsis:

This book published to accompany a retrospective touring exhibition, celebrates John Smith's unique visual and literary vocabulary developed through some forty films, videotapes and installations made between 1972 and 2002

Smith tests the limits of the art of film-making exerting pressure on each of its constituent parts: script, sound, image and editing to produce works which are rigorous and compelling. The ideas might begin with the composition of poetic sequences or narrators as characters or the extensive collection of detailed pictures of a subject in his locale. In this book John Smith has re-edited the films as stills and spoken texts and whilst it is sad not to study the sound compositions (an important element in the work), the book concentrates the mind on visual and prosaic pleasures.

The publication contains essays by Cornelia Parker, Al Rees, Ian Bourne and Nicky Hamlyn an interview with John Smith by Cate Elwes; Stills from The Black Tower, Slow Glass, Blight, The kiss, Regression, Lost Sound and spoken texts from Slow Glass, Gargantuan and Blight.