Matthew Arthur Williams at Dundee Contemporary Art

By Beth James

Matthew Arthur Williams’ first major solo exhibition, Soon Come at Dundee Contemporary Arts, debuts a new body of work exploring the themes of memory, archive, representation, visibility, and resistance. Through a newly commissioned film and sound work exhibited alongside photographic work, the exhibition explores the above themes in relation to what it means to be Black and queer in shifting environments. Soon Come asks the viewer to consider history as multiple narratives, layered and concealed, rather than a binary truth of fact and fiction. Williams situates family history alongside wider historical narratives addressing the places he calls home. The exhibition is spread across two adjoining galleries at Dundee Contemporary Arts.

Upon walking into the first gallery space at Dundee Contemporary Arts, one is welcomed by the first of three self-portraits of the artist. Displayed on a grass-green wall, Untitled I (2022) is a black-and-white photographic print on fibre-based archival paper. Like all the photographs in the exhibition, Untitled I has been developed using traditional techniques in a dark room, requiring patience and care. All three of Williams’ self-portraits are displayed on verdant green walls and depict the lone nude artist. Williams has composed themselves in positions that hint at the vulnerability of sharing one’s naked self with another. The positioning of Untitled I as the exhibition’s starting point invites the viewer into a space that unfolds personal histories. In the self-portraits, Williams can be seen holding the clicker to capture his picture, the cable wrapping around his hand and arm. The way in which Williams has lit the self-portraits - harsh dark lighting - alludes to the idea of (in)visibility and how a viewer must search to see the whole picture.

Installation view of Matthew Arthur Williams, *Soon Come*, (2022), Dundee Contemporary Arts. Photograph by Ruth Clark.

The photographs in the exhibition are displayed in different modes. Some are traditionally hung on the gallery walls. Others are placed on top of fixtures in the gallery space, conveying a sense of feeling untethered or in motion. The traditional darkroom techniques and the use of fibre-based archival paper leave evidence of the artist’s hand. These methods take time and consideration to complete. In contrast, the film uses digital video elements that speak to the current accelerated consumption of media and information, devoid of meticulous detail and care.

In all aspects of the exhibition, Williams collects together disparate places, most notably Stoke-On-Trent, England and Clarendon, Jamaica, through family archival material and his own work to convey a home that collapses space and time. Williams’ family travelled from Jamaica in the 1950s to settle in the UK. Stoke-on-Trent is where Williams’ mother and maternal grandparents settled, adding to the diverse community of individuals who relocated there during the twentieth century. Such individuals took on work in coal mining, transportation, and hospitality. Soon Come features Williams’ family’s lived experiences and memories through image and voice, as well as exploring historical narratives of such relocations. In the first gallery space are photographs of family members and areas and buildings from places Williams feels connected to. While having been located in Glasgow for almost a decade, Williams has lived and explored various locations and carries these places with him. Soon Come speaks to the way in which locations, and the memories associated with them, become part of one’s history, present, and fundamental being.

Matthew Arthur Williams, *Six Towns*, 2022, fibre-based archival darkroom print.

Contrasting Williams’ use of traditional photographic techniques for the images displayed, the film exhibited also uses digital video as well as archival film footage and Williams’ own video filmed on 16 mm. Two opposing screens occupy most of the space in the second gallery. The images displayed on the screens are not always in sync with one another, giving one the sense of multiple perspectives and stories. The audio hangs in the air between the two screens creating an immersive experience for the viewer. Quoting Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), “to articulate the past does not mean to recognise it ‘the way it really was.’ It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” Williams echoes this in the imagery and sound: there are flashing red lights, plumes of smoke, soundscapes building up to crescendos. The 16 mm film interspersed throughout again demonstrates the idea of familiarity and growing danger. The film features the arms and hands of Williams and a friend moving from a soft and vulnerable space of care through gentle touching and rubbing, to a space of aggression and desperation, grasping and pulling.

Film still, two channel film, *Soon Come*, Matthew Arthur Clark, (2022), Dundee Contemporary Arts.

The film echoes the places in the photographs in the first gallery space. Showing landscapes that have been touched by humankind and industry overlaid with voices sharing memories and experiences, the viewer is asked to challenge the notion of home being a single place and prompted to explore how it can exist across distance and time. Williams interlaces these familial memories with archival footage from public records and the media. The inclusion of these narratives purposefully complicates the notion of a singular history and questions the biased authorship of documenting archives and whose stories are left out. Soon Come deals with themes often over-theorised, such as memory and archive; the inclusion of the personal narrative adds importance and humanity to what is often treated as abstract.

Williams’ use of soundscapes in the film adds to the feeling of flux and connectivity. The use of woodwind instruments literally breathes life into the film through repetitions and refrains, mimicking human breath. The film’s closing, which is twenty minutes and twenty-five seconds, features the song, People Make the World Go Round by the Jamaican reggae band The Chosen Few. The music plays against the final scene of a setting sun.

There are elements in the exhibition that allude to cycles and the potential of revisiting. Like the entrance into the exhibition, the end also features a self-portrait of Williams, Untitled II. This image is again displayed on a green background and gives the sense of the exhibition coming to an end, yet it is also a reminder or invitation to revisit. The third self-portrait, Untitled III, is hung in a vitrine that gives the viewer a clear view into the second space, almost as an introduction to the next space.

The exhibition’s title, Soon Come, invites the viewer to take the time to slow down our thinking and living in environments that demand acceleration. Williams also notes how “soon come” is a saying in Jamaican Patois that has a plurality of meanings and is uncommitted to a fixed tense or concept of progress and time. It is a sentiment that embraces and perpetuates the unknown and the ungraspable. There are no specifics, but there is somewhere between now, later, and never. The sentiment speaks to the fluidity of time and experience displayed in Soon Come through the generosity of Williams’ family archive.

Matthew Arthur Williams, Soon Come is exhibited at Dundee Contemporary Arts until 26th March 2023.

Bibliography

Charman, Helen. “Matthew Arthur Williams Opens His Family Archive.” Frieze. January 23, 2023. Accessed February 5, 2023. https://www.frieze.com/article/matthew-arthur-williams-soon-come-2023-review.

Dundee Contemporary Arts. “Matthew Arthur Williams.” Dundee Contemporary Arts. Accessed February 5, 2023. https://www.dca.org.uk/whats-on/event/matthew-arthur-williams-soon-come.

Matthew Arthur Williams. “Soon Come.” Matthew Arthur Williams. Accessed February 5, 2023. https://www.matthewarthurwilliams.com/soon-come.