‘Covid Messages’ is a video in six parts, based around broadcasts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.

At Stamford Road in Dalston Junction of east London, the camera follows pedestrians, cars and birds while a narrator, who appears to be the director behind the camera, seems to instruct the objects.

16mm experimental film of a desk fan.

‘Dungeness’ was originally made for ‘Dungeness: The Desert in the Garden’, a multi-media theatre production directed by Graeme Miller. By selectively framing and alternating monochrome fields within the Dungeness landscape the film creates a series of abstract rhythms. Incidentally, and unbeknown to myself until years after filming, ‘Dungeness’ features a guest appearance from Derek Jarman’s then recently acquired Prospect Cottage.

In the mid 1970s the EMI company were preparing to market the newly developed video disc. Being uncertain as to what content would be appropriate, and looking for innovative ideas, EMI commissioned four postgraduate film students, including myself, to make short films for market research purposes. As the disc would be expensive to produce and would necessarily retail for a high price, EMI were looking for content that viewers would want to watch on multiple occasions, bizarrely setting the brief that the films had to be based on the Guinness Book of Records. I decided to make a multi-layered piece that was so dense that multiple viewings would be required in order to assimilate all of its information.

Rapid cutting between identically framed portrait photographs creates composite faces and various illusions of movement. The film features photographs of students and staff at North-East London Polytechnic, including Tim Bruce, Ian Kerr, Lis Rhodes, Guy Sherwin and myself.

On the 23rd of June 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union. Who Are We? is a re-working of material from a BBC television debate transmitted a few weeks earlier.”The most provocative of the bunch is John Smith’s Who Are We?. Leading up to the Brexit vote, BBC’s Question Time became ever more vicious and confrontational. Who Are We? is a manipulation of one of those broadcasts, with David Dimbleby prompting “you, sir, up there on the far right” repeatedly.“Get our identity back – vote leave!” one audience member shouts, while another declares himself a veteran, followed by a swift manipulated cut to rapturous applause. It’s a heavily edited and remixed edition of Question Time, but by highlighting those in the audience with attitudes ranging from nationalistic to xenophobic, Smith’s short film shows the now normalised extremism within our society and our political discourse.” Scott Wilson, Common Space magazine, April 2017

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Matthew 5:38-40

A larger than life tribute to Prince Philip, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, recorded in 2002 and completed on the day of his death, April 9th 2021.

A reworking of material from the 16mm film ‘Blue Bathroom’, a distillation of ideas concerning the tension between representation and materiality. By superimposing and alternating identical framings of two windows filmed by day and by night the film uses their positive/negative aspect to construct and break down representational images and sounds.