The Failing Light But Polmadie Shines

About

Following in the vein of previous film works, the project and exhibition at the Studio Pavilion will take as its starting point the work of Glasgow born architect and engineer Archibald Leitch. Leitch began his career designing factories with the sole surviving example being the category A listed Sentinel Works at Jessie Street, Polmadie. He also went on to become Britain’s foremost football architect. In total he was commissioned to design part or all of more than 20 stadiums in the UK and Ireland between 1899 and 1939.

April 2019 will mark 80 years since Leitch died. To examine his work within the context of a gallery in the city of his birth seems fitting.

Rice’s film will focus specifically on Leitch’s Polmadie Sentinel works which is the last of his factories known to have survived. It was the first steel-reinforced concrete building in Scotland and the third oldest to survive in the UK. Although it is listed category A, as a building of significant national importance, it is now derelict.

Through moving image, sound-scape, original salvaged architectural objects, typography & print, the exhibition will explore the shared, transferable language of industrial design that translated into football grounds in the United Kingdom and its lasting social impact. The significance of two places & sites,  factory and football field, will be considered in the context of their impact on the lives of many, exploring how Archibald’s work spanned across the two. By bringing the building into the gallery through film and sound Rice will offer an alternate insight into an overlooked subject and disparate place and do so through the alternative medium of artist film and sculptural installation.

Rice’s first short film Mining Poems or Odes, 2015 won the Best Short Film award at The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Scotland, 2015 and was nominated for Best Short Film at the EE British Academy Film and television Arts Awards in 2016. As well as being selected to screen in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, Utah 2016. Listen to Bridgeton, 2017 was chosen to screen at BFI Southbank and on BBC Four as part of a celebration of the 75th anniversary of Listen to Britain, Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister’s poetic collage of British life. Rice’s most recent short titled Mary 2018 was commissioned by Film Roundhouse and shown on the BBC.