Jamie Crewe, Ashley at Campbeltown Picture House

We are delighted to present Jamie Crewe’s Margaret Tait Award commission Ashley (2020) at Campbeltown Picture House, the final screening of a year-long tour.

Dragging a wheelie case behind them, Ashley arrives at an isolated beachside cottage. They hope that this weekend in the countryside might be the change they need: a change from depression, from heartbreak, from the pain of a shifting identity. As the weekend unfolds, however, their hope wavers: things go wrong in their body, or perhaps in their mind — or perhaps there really is something, outside, developing an appetite for them…

Ashley is a semi-autobiographical rural horror film filmed on the West Coast of Scotland. Its only character is played onscreen by the artist, and voiced in narration by the poet and performance maker Travis Alabanza. Drawing on the conventions of the rural horror genre (seen in television series such as the BBC’s West Country Tales, 1982 – 83) and of Margaret Tait’s work in the Scottish landscape tradition, the film takes an experience of modern femininity and mines it for terror. In doing so, it animates the fears, stresses, and vivid transformations of a certain kind of trans life.

Jamie Crewe was the recipient of the Margaret Tait Award 2019, Scotland’s most prestigious moving image prize for artists. Inspired by the pioneering Orcadian filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait (1918 – 99), the award recognises experimental and innovative artists working with the moving image, offering a unique avenue of commissioning and production support and providing a high-profile platform to exhibit newly commissioned work. Established in 2010, the Margaret Tait Award is a LUX Scotland commission delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film, with support from Screen Scotland.

Programme:

The screening will be introduced by Jamie Crewe.

Ashley, 2020, 45 minutes

Jamie Crewe is a beautiful bronze figure with a polished cocotte’s head. They grew up in the Peak District and are now settled in Glasgow.

They have presented several solo exhibitions: Solidarity & Love, Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2020); Love & Solidarity, Grand Union, Birmingham (2020); Pastoral Drama, Tramway, Glasgow (2018); Female Executioner, Gasworks, London (2017); and But what was most awful was a girl who was singing, Transmission, Glasgow (2016). Their work has also been presented as part of I, I, I, I, I, I, I Kathy Acker at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2019); as part of the KW Production Series at Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2018); as part of the Glasgow International 2018 Director’s Programme in the group show Cellular World at GoMA, Glasgow; and as part of the Artists’ Moving Image Festival 2016 at Tramway, Glasgow.

In 2020 they were awarded one of ten Turner Bursaries on the basis of their sister exhibitions at Humber Street Gallery, Hull, and Grand Union, Birmingham. In 2021/​22 they will be part of British Art Show 9, which will tour Wolverhampton, Plymouth, Aberdeen, and Manchester.