South London Gallery
London
Fri 6 Mar 2020 to Sun 19 Apr 2020 (temp closed)
PR: Artist Sophie Cundale presents a new film, a supernatural melodrama about loss that follows the journey of a professional boxer after a near-fatal knockout. The boxer’s disorientations become entangled with the story of a queen living with Cotard Delusion, a rare neurological condition inducing the belief in and sensation of death.
The film’s title, The Near Room (2020), is taken from the boxer Muhammad Ali’s description of a vivid, hallucinatory space he would enter when in the depths of a fight.
The cast includes professional boxer John Harding Jnr., artist Penny Goring, and actor Chris New.
The Near Room (2020) by Sophie Cundale is commissioned and produced by Film and Video Umbrella with support from Arts Council England, South London Gallery, Bonington Gallery, Curator Space, and The Gane Trust
Sophie Cundale (b. 1987) is an artist living and working in London. Previous work has been commissioned by Serpentine Galleries and the South London Gallery; screened at Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Spike Island, Bristol, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Zealand, Catalyst Arts, AMINI festival, Belfast, VCD festival, Beijing and Innsbruck Biennale, Austria; and hosted on vdrome.org. The Near Room at the South London Gallery is her first major solo exhibition and travels in December 2020 to Bonington Gallery, Nottingham.
Sophie Cundale, The Near Room, 2020 (film still). Installation view at the South London Gallery. Photo: Andy Stagg. Courtesy the artist and FVU
