Shot in numerous locations spanning Cornwall, Orkney, London and Sussex, in the UK, to the Cévennes region in France and various sites in Greece, Nick Collins' films – usually made on 16mm film – explore landscapes, human presence and absence and the passage of time. The evidence that we’re shown of the civic and sacred functions of these different sites, across time, is matched by the filmmaker’s lyrical observations of fleeting moments and the associative links he makes between striking images. An underlying metaphor in the films concerns the openings, entrances, and foundations that are animated by light. Collins is a master of cinematography working with minimal means.

"Nick Collins has quietly built a body of work by slow and patient steps that tested the scope and focus of his art. In some respects this echoes the character of the films themselves, which are on the cusp between personal lyric, with its implication of subjectivity, and direct observation, with its camera-eye objectivism. They enact a kind of absorption in seeing, but always in relation to particular sites and events, such as water, sky, gardens, natural landscape and the traces of human habitation. They rarely show people, but they are not impersonal. The persons implicated in the films, however, are those not depicted in it. The filmmaker is one such, apart from rare traces of his occasionally glimpsed shadow. The viewer is another, more radically absent since not present at the original filming. Together, the maker and viewer complete the projected space of the image when ultimately the film is shown, and becomes "present to us"." – A.L. Rees

The films in this programme will be selected by the filmmaker who will also be in conversation with artist and filmmaker Karel Doing.