Southport Pleasureland: painting and film

 During my time recovering from Covid I tried to work at home when I was feeling well enough. 

I decided to try acrylics to paint Pleasureland from memory. It is work in progress and to be honest I'm not too happy with the result so far. It's been a while since I painted and I got the fear before I started. My background is in watercolour painting so I don't have a huge amount of experience. The painting is not finished and I plan to finish it and add a grey gloomy cast over it to represent the fear of being lost / left in Southport age 5 with my sister age 10 by the local Abbey Hey Working Men's club day out.

I love the work of Cecily Brown and I thought at art school I would be developing my painting skills. However, I have been drawn to sculpture, film and printing during my years at London Met.

While at home I also found the old cine film we have from 1950s/60s. The footage we have is incredible, taken in the UK, Malta and various European holiday destinations. I don't think many people had cine camera's at the time so seeing everyday life recorded in these colours and format feels quite unique. I plan to use it for my film but I am also thinking of other ways to make this footage public.

Although its not filmed in Southport many of the films are UK holiday destinations. I plan to use sections of the cine films in my Pleasureland film. The footage without people or anything that dates the image too much (cars, clothes, etc). The faded colours and low quality image do look quite like 1970s photographs. I will put these alongside photographic stills and newly filmed footage to create a short film about my experience in Southport. I plan to narrate the story. See below for stills from the cine film....