CoExist Galleries & Studios @ TAP The Old Water Works North Road, Southend on Sea, Essex, SS0 7AB

Come to CoExist Gallery @ TAP TONIGHT between 7-9pm to see the preview of two new shows there:

1) MAIN GALLERY & WINCH ROOM: EXPOSURE

Exposure WEBSITE.

2) THE SMALL GALLERY: FRAN WILDE - ‘Handed’: Videos from a visit to India

Fran Wilde has a long standing fascination with landscape and constructed spaces and more recently she has been interested in stories that arise when people enter the scene. These six short films represent experiments by Fran in editing footage, photographs and sound that she recorded with a compact digital camera on a trip to India in February 2009. Fran’s interest in India comes from contact with grass-roots development NGOs there.

- ‘STEPS’ was filmed in a rare stepped well in Gujarat where people walk down to the ground water level.

- ‘CAROUSEL’ is a marriage of traffic filmed from an auto taxi in Baroda and the mechanical music of a fairground roundabout at Bushy Park, Surrey.

- ‘NIGHT CALLS’ is edited call-and-response by two singers heard early morning from a Sikh temple in Delhi.

- ‘IN DEO SPERAMUS: IN GOD WE TRUST’ Ganesh, the God of New Beginnings, is prepared by music students at the Madras Music Academy.

- ‘HANDED’ considers the hands-on nature of life in India. People have an everyday dexterity not seen in the UK and hand posture is symbolically significant for Gods and dancers.

- ‘COUCHED’ uses photos taken on an overnight train. The drawing is based on a traditional style of textile art called Kalumkari (pen work), also seen in ‘Handed’.

COEXIST GALLERY @ TAP, North Rd, Southend, www.coexist.org.uk