An Evening of Film and Performance: Adam Moore and Leila Gamaz, Q&A with Adham Faramawy
Join Focal Point Gallery for an exciting evening of film and performance by Adam Moore and Leila Gamaz, taking place on Saturday, 7 December, 5pm to 7pm, in the context of Adham Faramawy’s solo exhibition ‘And these deceitful waters’. Doors open at 5pm, with screenings beginning at 5:30pm.
The evening will start with Leila Gamaz’s film Marwan and Khalil (2022) followed by a screening and performance of Farther, Like a dream unfinished into ever (2023) by Adam Moore. The event will end with a Q&A session moderated by Adham Faramawy, exploring themes present in the exhibition such as familial ties, migration, ecology and storytelling. Please book your tickets here.
Work in order of appearance:
Leila Gamaz, Marwan and Khalil (2022), 10:21 mins
Using VHS footage shot by her father and Uncle on their land in the Sahara Desert and their home village, Gamaz weaves a semi-autobiographical story around the images. Centring the voice, the artist honours the rich tradition of North African oral storytelling kept alive by her great-grandmother and so many others. The desert has always held a mythical place in Gamaz’s family’s consciousness – despite owning land there, there have been many periods in their lives when it’s been inaccessible due to colonial occupation and war. It became something the family could dream about as a means of transcending their circumstances. Inspired by facts, fictions, myths, mysticism, and the elusiveness of memory, Gamaz used the power of dreams to conjure this film in the same way that her family did to manifest apples in the desert.
Adam Moore, Farther, Like a dream unfinished into ever (2023), 19:09 mins
Moore’s work explores death, loss, grief, rebirth, transformation, migration, and ecological and elemental allies of rain forests, wind, and water bodies in the Caribbean. The performance uses choreography, projected photographs and video, the architecture of the space where the screening takes place, and music to explore memory, home, lineage, place, and the body as a container and conduit, migrating between and communing with these.
About the artists:
Leila Gamaz is an Algerian-British artist who uses writing, film and archival research to share untold stories that create waymarkers for the diasporic journey of homecoming. This encompasses both the tangible and intangible memories held in species, landscapes and people. She ritualises and remembers our collective past, building upon it to imagine alternative futures. www.leilagamaz.com
Adam Moore is a transdisciplinary artist, dancer, and writer of Caribbean and European heritage. He creates performance, installation, design, public art, and site-related interventions with collaborative socially engaged forms. His studio practice expands and includes working with archives and collections; photography and print; sound and moving image; sculpture; drawing and painting; writing and self-publishing. adammoorecreate.com