Essex Road 5

David Blandy

Michelle Deignan

Rä di Martino

Dmitri Galitzine

Jayne Parker

Hiraki Sawa

Nicole Vinokur

Michelle Williams Gamaker

For Essex Road 5, Tintype’s large window, situated on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year, with the eight films screened on a loop every day from 4pm – 11pm.

Tintype’s Essex Road project has reached its landmark fifth birthday. A popular and much anticipated local event, the annual commissions are now recognised for their significance within the ecology of moving image arts in the UK – enabling eight artists each year to make new work. Over the past five years, Tintype has commissioned and produced 40 artists’ films, which are back-projected into the gallery’s window and viewed from the street as a form of public art.

The driving force behind the project is the desire to work with outstanding artists, producing new work that is shown in an unusual context. Whilst the brief is very simple – to make a short film that responds to one London street, Essex Road – the results have been astonishingly diverse. Turning a prism onto a very specific locale has, perhaps counter-intuitively, encouraged a magnificently adventurous response.