Wormshine

Overview

Sam Williams's video collage coils its way through the gallery across seven monitors rooted to the ground. The work is an assemblage of research material: footage from university labs and the archives of the Natural History Museum; records of Darwin's experiments with earthworms at Down House; images of worms in art and popular culture; and myriad other annelid imagery. Two choreographies move through all of this: one is a text that moves linguistically through soil horizons. The other is movement material showing tasks enacted by a lone performer working with rope. The body casts, crawls and turns, flattening and coiling, continuously without acknowledgement. This is an experiment in embodying the worm as an image - in exploring softness, resilience strength and hidden labour.