Unit#1: Rachel Calder

Unit#1, a new rolling programme of exhibitions and projects presents recent work from Rachel Calder. For this first instalment of Unit#1 Rachel’s Dreamboat will occupy a new internal project space throughout the duration of the exhibition The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp.

Resulting from a self-instigated journey by fruit cargo ship to South America, Rachel has produced 52 reels of film footage documenting the voyage from Dover to Cartagena, via Columbia, Argentina and Chile. Armed only with a camera, a harmonica and an audio book and the only non-crew on the passage, Rachel recorded extensively on Super-8 film. Re-presented together for the first time, these films form a kind of travelogue, a record of hours, days, weeks spent at sea.

Dreamboat examines not only Rachel’s own motives but also the aspirations that we all have. What keeps most of us in the same spot when our daily dreams of the future include trips to far off places, escape from day to day monotony, fantasies of the person we could be.

Programme