Maeve Woods’ Super 8 Films

Lit Flat (1987), Maeve Woods

AFW is excited to show three super 8 films by artist Maeve Woods.

7:30pm Tuesday 27 May 2025
The Brunswick Green, 313/315 Sydney Road, Brunswick
$10 tickets on the door.
8mm Projection.

Maeve Woods burst into the Melbourne Super 8 film scene in a bout 1989 when she moved down

from Sydney, bringing with her a new long form work (for super 8) Lit Flat. She would go on to

make two more long form works and several shorter films over the next 7 years in the Melbourne

Super 8 scene. Maeve, while most established as a painter, has explored many media. In the 1980s

she worked a lot with colour slides. She also worked with collage and with installations. Some of

her slide work is re-explored in her later super 8 films. Indeed, rephotography and re-framing of

images occurs frequently in her film work. Maeve was always a keen cineaste. However this was

not what most informed her own filmmaking. Like her paintings, her films are mostly motivated by

concerns for properties of the surface – in her films this is the surface of bodies and objects, of the

film material and of light itself.

FILMS

Gritty

1991 7 mins

GRITTY was rephotographed off both slides and cine footage made in 1983. The location is a

popular beach where people are active enjoying the sunshine. However, I wanted to explore the

notion of the Gaze and to bring out the darker aspects that resort, specially hints of voyeurism. I do

this through exaggeratedly slow camera movements upon the still images and long unnaturally

extended pans with moving images of children running and fishing in sunset reflecting pools.

Triad Tesseraic

1992, 9 mins

The 16th century wall in Ferrara, Italy has a surface made up of thousands of pyramids. Using

slides taken from this wall in 1982, photography, multiple exposure overlayering, gels and coloured

light break the wall material into shimmering triadic forms. Substance - disintegration.

Lit Flat

1987 49 mins

Filmed in a small, upper story flat in Sydney. An exploration of light, space and surface tension.