EASTBOURNE.- Jananne Al-Ani is a London-based, Iraqi-born artist working with photography, film and video. Her early work combines intimate recollections of absence and loss with more official accounts of historic events. In recent years her interest has shifted to the representation of landscapes marked by conflict, with a focus on the Middle Eastern, American, and British landscapes as a means to explore contemporary geopolitical tensions and the legacy of British power and influence globally.

The artist presents an ambitious new moving image work at Towner Eastbourne and to coincide, curated an exhibition of works from Towner’s Collection further reflecting on the themes of the moving image piece. Both are on display from 12 February to 22 May 2022 in Towner’s two large upstairs gallery spaces.

In the new film - Timelines (2022) - Al-Ani reveals a micro-landscape within the surface of a museum object and employs testimony and storytelling to reflect on the relationship between Britain and Iraq. Alongside this, Al-Ani draws upon interviews with her mother, recalling personal experiences of growing up in Britain as the child of Irish immigrants and living in Iraq through intense social and political change. Her mother’s memories move between these contexts, creating a layered narrative where multiple timelines intersect and overlap.

This story is illustrated through a filmed aerial journey over the surface of a highly decorated brass tray, an object that originated in Iraq and is now held in the V&A Collection, donated by an unknown collector, known only as Mr Bing.

The tray at the centre of the film is said to depict events on Armistice Day, 1918, in the Iraqi town of al-Hindiyyah. Crowds of highly stylised Arab men and women and British soldiers in uniform are shown, from a bird’s eye view, on either bank of the river Euphrates, which cuts across the centre of the tray. Using ultra close-up images of the tray and its engraved surface, Al-Ani created a layered narrative over a vast landscape. Using ultra close-up images of the engraved surface and computer animation, Al-Ani transforms the flattened perspective of the scene into a vast landscape.

This is being presented across a large-scale curved screen, creating an immersive environment in which to encounter these stories. Timelines has been co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Towner Eastbourne with Art Fund support through the Moving Image Fund for Museums. The work has also been commissioned on the occasion of 2021 being 100 years since a modern Iraqi state was first formed.

Presented alongside this in the adjacent gallery is Bringing to Light: Jananne Al-Ani curates the Towner Collection. The artist has chosen works from the Collection by a broad range of artists including Roni Horn, Marine Hugonnier, Peter Lanyon, Eric Ravilious, Jem Southam and Victor Pasmore. Al-Ani brings together a range of prints, photographs, moving image works and paintings, which are being displayed with two further works of her own; Excavators (2010) and Black Powder Peninsula (2016). A Young Airman by Eric Ravilious in particular has been chosen for its connection, in the artist’s view, to the biplanes depicted in the object which features in the new film.

Chosen by Al-Ani from Towner’s Collection of over 5000 works, the curated selection also draws upon propositions that can be considered when viewing her new moving image work, such as looking at the world from an aerial view, notions of landscape; in particular when viewed through a lens, as well as space, light, pattern, and contested geographies.