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Registering relatives, friends and peers in their own environments, these two filmic portraits are marked by their subjective qualities and senses of ease, intimacy and respect. Each develops specific formal approaches to animate their portraits and draw subjects together.

Edward OwensÌýRemembrance: A Portrait StudyÌý1967, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 6Ìýmin

Remembrance: A Portrait Study is a filmic portrait of the artist’s mother, Mildered Owens, and her friends Irene Collins and Nettie Thomas, set to a score of 50s and 60s hit songs. Using Baroque lighting techniques, Owens captures the three women drinking and lounging oneÌýevening.Ìý

‘The music is by Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Running Wild’ fromÌýSome Like It Hot, because it’s a film portrait of Nettie Thomas. She did floors in white women’s homes, like black women did to support their families in the olden days. My mother is sitting in a wicker chair with an ostrich feather boa, a grey worsted wool skirt, a silk belt. For her portrait, I used ‘All Cried Out’ by Dusty Springfield…I was advised by Gregory Markopoulos not to play the music. Because Gregory didn’t think it wasÌýproper.’Ìý

Barbara McCulloughÌýShopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on RitualÌýSpace 1981, video, colour, sound, 60Ìýmin

Shopping Bag, Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual SpaceÌýportrays nine Los Angeles-based African American artists as they reflect on the role of ritual in their life and art. Artist David Hammons discusses the importance of chance and improvisation in his work while working on sculpture on a waste site, while N’Senga Nengudi talks about feeling possessed while staging her performances in freeway underpasses. Spanning performance to spoken word, environmental sculpture to music, each artist reflects on their creative processes and the ways in which cultural traditions come to inform their work. Seeking to adjust the criteria and language used to talk about artists of colour,Ìý
this experimental essay weaves together interviews, documentation and photographs, intercut with the music of DonÌýCherry.