File 2 - Saskia Olde Wolbers

Photographs of the film 'Trailer' by Saskia Olde Wolbers, shown at the South London Gallery from 18 May to 17 July 2005. Trailer tells the story of a man watching a trailer for a movie. He is a middle aged man, named Alfgar Dalio, who we hear but never see and he describes his discovery that his real parents, who he has never known, were c-list actors in the Thirties. While watching a trailer for a film, he learns that his parents disappeared in the jungle shooting their last film and subsequently two species of venomous plants were named after them: Elmore Vella, a species of flytrap, and Ring Kittle, an ancient red back tree. Alfgar Dalio was named after a moth that became homeless when his mother’s addiction to the flytrap caused its extinction. Elmore Vella and Ring Kettle often played roles too minor for them to be included in film credits, so Dalio spends his days in cinemas watching old black and white movies made by their studio, Roxboro, in the hope that one of his parents might make an appearance. He lived his life on the trail of his parents, constantly searching for clues of a long-forgotten shared history. In Trailer, scenes alternated between the maroon coloured interior of a cinema and an extraordinary jungle. In fact, these were painstakingly hand crafted sets, manipulated in various ways to create work in which boundaries between film, sculpture, installation and painting are redefined.

The exhibition was supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, Vicky Hughes and John Smith, and Maureen Paley, London. Media Sponsor: Pluk Magazine.