Spectral Membranes
Spectral Membranes is a continuation of my Revenants work, using analogue film to explore the thresholds between visibility and disappearance, immersion and ruin, ghosts and the bones beneath them. This project is a dedicated period of research and development to explore chemical and material possibilities in analogue film.
Working with expired 8mm/16mm film and experimental processes, I stage conditions where images almost form and then slip. It is a space where light, time, and chemicals converge in unstable ways. Each failure and chemical transformation becomes part of the meaning, acknowledging precarity in ecological, technological, and material terms.
Through structured testing of reversal, toning, and contact printing techniques, I will explore new moving image languages alongside developing a cohesive essay-film framework integrating moving image and text. The project balances experimental immediacy with disciplined methodology. The knowledge and methods developed here will inform future public-facing projects including installations, essay-films, screenings, lecture-performances, and publications.
About me
Sapphire Goss is an artist who works with moving image, photography and other lens-based methods. She explores the fragility of time, place, and perception through analogue film, sound, and material experimentation, creating chimerical imagery to make an ‘analogue uncanny’ where light, time and chemicals come together in unexpected ways: grainy, shimmering, otherworldly landscapes where the physical and spectral intertwine. Using obsolete processes and materials: analogue film, antique glass, paper, liquid lenses, organic materials, inputs from public contributors, multiple channels that feedback in endless combinations or sound/data responsive elements - she creates work that grows, lives and decays beyond the screen. Goss' work has been shown widely in exhibitions and events including the Barbican, ArtScience Singapore, Tate Exchange, By Art Matters Hangzhou, Fermynwoods Contemporary, Brighton Museums, Milton Keynes Art Centre, Denver Clock Tower and Maysles Centre New York. She has received multiple commissions and awards.
“Each video is a reinvention of cinema and a reminder of the magic inherent in the medium. Often working with analogue or even expired film and using homemade lenses to feature the repetitive textures of water, light, erosion, and other ecological materials and processes, Goss manages to create video art that is both wholly new and utterly infused with material history.”
Darran Anderson in the Yale Review, winter 2023 issue
Work examples: REVENANTS
Revenants is an ongoing series that involves using expired film, some of which dates as far back as the 1940s. Through shooting and developing new photos and footage, I revive these forgotten spools, creating new work that emerges from a combination of light, time, and chemicals. The term 'Revenants' refers to "coming back," either from another place or from the dead, symbolising my ‘re-animation’ of these obsolete technologies and materials. The work represents an oscillation between material, subject and form, distorting images through layers of light and time, utilising the imperfections of the obsolete formats.
Revenants: Optographic Animation (2023)
Video collage from 8mm, 1:1 circular screen, sound, 05'26''
Installation view, commissioned by ArtScience Museum Singapore.
Revenants: Compound Horizons (2023)
Digital video from 8mm/16mm, 4:3, sound, 9'09''
Film Stills, exhibited and screened at various venues worldwide.
Collaborators
James Holcombe (Erewhon) Darkroom specialist, analogue film lab and hand-processing workflows.
Darran Anderson Author, cultural critic; essay-film structure, conceptual framework.
Michèle Saint-Michel Artist and curator; mentoring, strategic development, integration with presentation contexts.
Processes
My practice is rooted in direct engagement with the material structure of analogue film. I work with expired 8mm and 16mm stock, often decades out of date, reactivating the emulsion through home-made and organic developers, hand toning, cameraless techniques and chemical intervention. I treat film not as a neutral recording device but as a reactive surface. Instability: fogging, colour shifts, reticulation, becomes a technical challenge as well as an aesthetic language. Behind each image is a sequence of measured tests. This project introduces a more systematic methodology, allowing material unpredictability to be engaged with greater intentional control.
Revenants: Luminous Signals (2024)
16mm colour, 8mm black & white, custom projection, 90’’.
Installation view, Daniels Fisher Tower, Denver.
Experience
Over the past decade I have developed an internationally exhibited body of analogue moving image work exploring material fragility, entropy and the body through direct intervention with film. My projects have been presented across gallery, festival and interdisciplinary contexts, demonstrating both critical engagement and substantial public reach.
An exhibition featuring my work at ArtScience Museum Singapore was experienced by over 50,000 visitors, evidencing the capacity of my practice to engage large and diverse audiences. In England and internationally, my work has been shown with organisations including Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Brighton Museums, The Barbican, and Light Nights Denver, and screened within artist moving image and experimental film contexts. I have undertaken periods of residencies and research and received funding including ACE project funing for Eternity City (2018) and DYCP for Suspended Animation (2022). My work has been featured in interviews, articles and podcasts. See full list here.
These established exhibition routes and institutional relationships provide a clear pathway for future dissemination ensuring that research undertaken now will translate directly into publicly presented work.. The research and technical refinement undertaken through Spectral Membranes will directly strengthen the quality, coherence and sustainability of forthcoming public-facing works, building on an existing track record of national and international presentation.
"The works explore the stagnation of time and the dissociation between memory and illusion, but also form a collision between distance and rhythm, constructing a drifting and blurred dream, guiding us to shuttle between the tangible and intangible, time and space."
Exhibition notes: To the Past, to the Future, By Art Matters Hangzhou
Below - Ongoing research, work in progress and documentation via instagram.com/sapphire_goss
