Falling Away – a prelude

This online event is the prelude to an exhibition of Catherine Yass’s films at Ambika P3. The exhibition, titled Falling Away, showcases a selection of Yass’s vertiginous films of architectural structures from the past 20 years. Initially scheduled in the LFA 2020 ‘Power’ programme, it has been postponed to the summer of 2021. Seven films will be brought together for the most comprehensive show of Yass’s work to date. The buildings in her films are undergoing demolition or construction, some are falling into disrepair: as they crumble, so too do the powers behind them. The viewer is drawn into dizzying spaces as the camera is turned upside down, plunged into water, lowered from cranes, buried under falling rubble. The exhibition addresses our society’s ambivalent relationship with modernity and the material structures that give it form. By addressing urgent issues around architecture and the institutions it embodies, it will contribute to current debates about how built environments shape our lives. In anticipation of this Ambika P3 show, we present one of Yass’s films, Royal London (2018), together with an essay written for the upcoming exhibition catalogue by Christopher Kul-Want.