Quarries of Wandering Form by Judy Price is a project exploring the stone quarry industry in the Palestinian territory of West Bank. The films and photographs make visible the effects of quarrying on the landscape and symbolize a region which is suffocated by the Occupation yet also resists and endures the violence against it. Over a three-year period Price has observed and documented the expropriation of land and shared stories by individuals of the day-to-day lives of the quarry. The feature film White Oil is structured around the interplay between day and night. The day scenes focus on the decimation of the landscape: the machines and non-human elements, settlements and landscape, sounds of industry and cutting of the stone. This section has now for the exhibition at 3,14 been adapted to a double screen installation. The night scenes, now on its own single screen projection, in contrast, are more intimate, focusing on the social gathering of a group of brothers, who rent land to excavate the stone from on the outskirts of Ramallah.

 

White Oil is long-form film that unfolds narratives around colonialism, expropriation of land and mobility through the day-to-day lives of the quarry owners, workers and security guards This includes their personal histories and experiences as well as the changing landscape and conditions of the quarries bringing to bear the myriad losses of land, economy, identity, history, and community. Photographs of olive trees make visible the effects of the quarries on the surrounding landscape and symbolize a region that has been suffocated by the Occupation yet also resists and endures the violence to this landscape. 

Judy Price works across photography, moving image, sound, and installation and is interested in how art can create new perceptions of the experiences of individuals and social groups and arts' effectiveness and relevance to collective struggles. Her practice involves extensive field research where she explores sites and locations that are interweaved and striated by multiple histories, economies, and forces. She often employs multiple strategies drawing on images and sounds from archival sources as well as from a sustained study of a place that is resonant with overwritten histories and redrawn boundaries.

 

 

Judy Price (b. 1967, London, Britain). Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally including; UK (Imperial War Museum and Barbican, London and Tent Gallery, Edinburgh), Norway (Stiftelsen 3,14 and USF Centre Bergen), Canada (Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal), Germany (Kunshaus Cinema), and Palestine (Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah and AlMa’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem). In 2013 White Oil was screened at the Kunshaus Cinema, Nürnberg, Germany, and Palestinian Film Festival, Barbican, London.

Price is also a Course Director in Photography (MA) at Kingston University and a Senior Lecturer in Moving Image (BA) at the University of Brighton.

 

Quarries of Wandering Form also presented as a solo exhibition at The Mosaic Rooms in London, from April 7th through June 17th, 2017.

 

Quarries of Wandering Form, text by Judy Price >>>

Interview by Christiane Monarchi, Director of Photomonitor, about White Oil >>>

 

[http://www.worldofmatter.net/geology-disaster#path=geology-disaster]

[www.worldofmatter.net/judy-price]

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