Rudi Williams

Last Picture Show

Rudi Williams’ installations evoke narratives that test a viewer’s logic of memory and space using photographs, objects and projections. These studies of interiors of cultural places of congregation become time capsules within a precise moment of observation.

Interested in the relationship between reality (the viewer) and simulation (the space), Williams conveys how our recollection of a space is often obscured by anomalies such as reflections and associations. Williams engages with analogue photographic techniques. She manipulates traditional processes to discover and reveal anomalies that create connections between disparate histories.

Williams is interested in time as an inevitable force of change. Her documentation of The Grater Union cinema, before it’s demolition and subsequent redevelopment, is a haunting reminder of time’s destructive properties.

Last Picture Show is a study of the Capitol Arcade and the building’s initial incarnation as a Theatre. Combining iconic cinematic footage with hand-printed Type C photographic prints of the interior of the remaining Capitol Theatre and the shop fronts that adorn the old Theatre foyer, Williams comments on the irony of faculties of perception.