Dan Guthrie

Explore the psychological underpinnings of love and murder in a small mountain resort town while following popular children’s book author and illustrator Olivia Lake, whose literary success makes her a local celebrity in the tight-knit community.

After seeing a mention of a man called ‘Daniel’ on a Bishop’s Transcript held in Gloucestershire Archives, Dan goes for a walk in the woods in search of the man buried in Nympsfield in 1719 and described on the Transcript as ‘a black stranger’. Whilst walking, Dan talks directly to Daniel, speculating about the parallels between him and his namesake, from potential walking routes to speeds and shoe sizes. As the film progresses, Dan opens up to Daniel about how he’s been made to feel like a ‘black stranger’ in his hometown of Stroud after his involvement in a council-led review of streets, buildings, statues and monuments garnered national media attention and right-wing backlash for asking people’s opinions on an object called the Black Boy Clock.

Tourists hunch under their Union Jack umbrella in the greenery of central London, while a composited flag in an array of red, white and blue Ankara fabrics ripples against the coastal waves of sunset-lit Margate Beach.

A reframing of an old photograph of three men posing effortlessly in their Sunday best from the artist’s family album. At once a gentle account of family history, of lived experience, of intergenerational dialogue and of connection to the landscapes of one’s youth, the film contemplates the Black diasporic experience, and the construction and manifestations of Black masculinity in the context of rural South West England in the 20th century and now.

The Blackboy Clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a Gloucestershire watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed niche on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock has undergone restorations in 1977 and 2004 and has remained a constant presence throughout Dan Guthrie’s life in Stroud. Empty Alcove is one of two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock—a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so.

Dan Guthrie was selected by Exeter Phoenix for their 2021 Artists’ Moving Image commission. His idea was to make a film about Blackness and belonging in the English countryside, taking a family photo of some of his relatives at the Gloucestershire viewpoint Coaley Peak as a starting point. Whilst making the film, something happened.

The Blackboy Clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a Gloucestershire watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed niche on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock has undergone restorations in 1977 and 2004 and has remained a constant presence throughout Dan Guthrie’s life in Stroud. Rotting Figure is one of two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock—a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so.