Artist-filmmakers Shamica Ruddock and Michelle Williams Gamaker will take part in a conversation around the context and ideas behind their recent works.

Ruddock’s 16mm film Knock Down Pork Knocker was exhibited as part of the artist’s Studio Voltaire exhibition earlier this year. Set against the backdrop of Guyana’s mining history, the work examines the intersection of Caribbean folklore with the lasting spiritual, material and labour legacies of resource extraction following British colonial rule.

Ruddock’s practice explores Afro-Caribbean orality, puppetry, masquerade and folk storytelling practices, alongside speculative fictions and futurisms across a body of sound, installation and moving-image work.

Williams Gamaker's practice interrogates cinema, specifically early-mid 20th-century British and Hollywood studio films. Since 2014, she has been developing her filmmaking as Critical Affection, producing works as Fictional Activism, Fictional Revenge and Fictional Healing: the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures who challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.

Taking Knock Down Pork Knocker as a starting point, Ruddock and Williams Gamaker will explore their approaches to storytelling and historical research in their moving image works. The pair will discuss their wider practices across sound and moving image, and explore how these media can serve as a site for knowledge production. The event will conclude with an opportunity for audience questions and discussion.