Terry Silvester Watersports

About

Fertile (2019)

In his latest film Fertile, the artist is invisibly part of the action. His presence is not dispassionate though and there is an idea that anyone watching the film also becomes culpably part of the narrative, despite not knowing how things may unfurl. A collaging of time and place leads to dislocation and unease as the fractured narratives jump erratically from one situation to another. The leading characters – a child in the first year of his life and a suited and bearded young man – seem fearless in their curiosity. What they see ranges from the prosaic to the elegiac, from the personal to the lyrical. There are passages of extraordinary beauty (the dreamlike underwater scenes) as well as moments of seeming banality (people wandering through scrubby fields with the rumble of nearby traffic). But full of wonder, all of what they experience is, or will be, somehow significant. - Roy Voss, London

The Swallowing of a Dog’s Eye (2019)

Pissing in the bushes. I was determined to wake up. I’d been wondering around in the upside down for far too long and it became apparent that I was no longer convinced of the line’s location, or indeed its actual existence. There were some obstacles in the way - the threat of injury or illness; the upcoming obligation to perform; self-preservation; the cutting chill of a restless autumn wind. All I was sure of was the necessity to break on through to the other side. It was a complete physical sensation. The fabric of clothing gliding over my skin, becoming colder, wetter, heavier as the mud oozed through its fibres. Hair slowly drenched and stuck to my forehead as the smell of decomposition and primordial soup swam up my nostrils. An uneasy salty taste. Blood rushing warm and thick. - Andrew Neil Hayes, Bristol