Vitrine Bermondsey Square and curator Gavin Ramsey are pleased to present ‘Visions from the top of a maypole’ featuring new work by Dave Charlesworth selected from a recently completed Arts Council England funded residency project at the Yorkshire Film Archive (YFA).

The installation sees Charlesworth suspend a maypole in Vitrine Bermondsey Square’s unique 16-metre long gallery window and surround it with a series of abstract still images taken from the films made during his residency, which will simultaneously be screened.

Charlesworth’s mixed moving image and performance practice exposes fragmented personal histories and generic social phenomena as avenues to explore experiences of the contemporary British landscape.

Taking as a starting point “The Fall and Rise of the Barwick Maypole” (1978) - a documentary depicting the traditional taking down, re-painting and putting back up, of the maypole in the centre of Barwick village - Charlesworth searched the YFA for footage recorded in the first ten years of his life. The result is a body of work that transposes personal biography onto the register of an archive; examining the role that information curation and management plays in constructing narrative understandings of place and landscape and exploring how fragments of moving image materials are filtered between communities and archival authorities and contribute to notions of ownership and narrative.

Curator Gavin Ramsey says: “It’s fantastic to be working with Vitrine Bermondsey Square for the progression of Dave’s YFA residency work. Opportunities for artists to continue pushing their practice and to work with interesting spaces are essential to them realising their vision. Having known Dave in various capacities over the years it’s great to be working with him so closely and at a space which continues to define Bermondsey’s creative scene.”

Dave Charlesworth (b. Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) is an artist and curator living and working in London. He has exhibited at Tate Britain, Wysing Art Centre, MK Gallery, David Roberts Art Foundation, Frieze Art Fair, Focal Point Gallery and the Armory Show in New York. Charlesworth is curator at London based gallery, South Kiosk.

All images Dave Charlesworth, 'Visions from the top of a maypole', 2014. Installation Shot, Vitrine Bermondsey Square. Courtesy of Vitrine.