Video Villanelle (for distance)

Directed by Catriona Gallagher

Gallagher weaves together an assemblage of films, creating a narrative through repetition. Documenting her experience caught between Athens and her new home in Northumberland, via a period of ‘uncertain waiting’ in the South East of England. Gallagher explores her sense of dislocation by organising footage from her phone into a visual villanelle, a poetic form with a strict rhyming structure and repeating lines. Footage shifts between presence and absence, movement and stasis. Between the sodium glow of the Athens street lights and the iconic bridges of the Tyne punctuated by sunsets and deluges of rain. Gallagher often draws attention to the overlooked, the ‘hidden in plain view’ aspects of life, questioning what we bear witness to and what we choose to ignore. Within the transitional period between lockdown and the easing of restrictions, Gallagher subtly explores emotional connections to home and place, considering what is outside and what we carry within.