Artist in Focus: John Smith
Home Suite
+ in conversation with John Smith and John Rogers
John Smith, UK / 1994 / 96 mins
John Smith takes us on a real time tour of the home from which he is being evicted, to make way for the building of the M11 link road. In the style of TV shows like Through The Keyhole that took viewers inside the homes of the great and good, John shows us his dilapidated home with great pride, chronicling the history of the everyday items he has lived with and bringing them back to life. Discussions of bathroom tiles and an attempt to understand why there are so many toothbrushes in a house with only one occupant shift into poignant reminiscences on the people he has shared this space with. The mundane and the profound jostle for centre stage throughout on a backdrop of political drama.
JOHN SMITH is one of Britain’s best known and most influential avant-garde filmmakers and has been described as “One of the UK’s most enduringly important moving-image artists” (Erika Balsom, ‘Best of 2022’, Artforum), and as “My favorite British film maker” by Jarvis Cocker. John’s films blend humour, political engagement and formal invention to make works on the politics of how we see the world. They open space for imagining different ways of seeing and thinking and consistently challenge the presentation of truth in the constructed worlds of films and images. John was born in Walthamstow, moving to Leytonstone in the early 1980s, and the area has been the setting for many of his best known works including The Black Tower, Blight and Home Suite.