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in order of appearance

Immediately inside the gallery we pass through gaps in a floor-to-ceiling wooden screen cutting the space diagonally in two. Ahead of us on the wall there�s a clue: the photograph of a replica of the Hollywood sign first erected by James on an Oxfordshire hillside. Now we can see that the screen behind us is the same thing, or as much as this space allows; the letters HOL. Without any warning we�re not in Kansas. anymore.

�Back/Projection� is exactly not that. It is the view filmed in real time through the back window of a taxi driving into Manhatten. What we�d expect - two actors in the back of the cab mocked up in the studio, behind them a mostly obscured external shot filmed at a different time and place - is not there. Nothing obscures the view; background has become foreground. And as viewers we�re in the position of Benjamin�s Angel of History, propelled into a future that�s hidden from us, facing only the unrolling vision of what we�re leaving behind.�Off/Screen - The Bar at the King�s Arms, Poland Street� ( revealingly subtitled � Got to get you into my life�) is a film of that popular gay bar on the evening of�A film of its reflection in a blank television screen high in the corner of the bar. Its darkness cut into by winking Xmas lights. We are all there, present as flickering shadows and a hubbub of voices fitfully penetrated by the jukebox music. The television is the screen, what was then to be seen on its surface. What you see is what happened should you have found yourself in this pub on that night.

�Late Night/Satellite� works with the seem material in a different way. Here it�s a TV screen in a hotel room in Riga being filmed; the channel-hopping images separated by glimpses of the filmmaker himself reflected in the screen. The real ghost in the machine. Present in the remote control.

in order of appearance

The tittle piece of the show � in order of appearance� is a work in progress, the beginning (and end ) of a full-lengh film, a 90 minute cast list of actors in key roles, ( whether large or small). As the credits roll, different memories are suggested to each of us, recognition of moments when a whole career, a whole performance, or maybe just s detail of one, made something happen on screen. Both an elegy and a celebration of the actor, the sometimes glorious human presence in film. Disappearing out of the frame as we watch.