8 December – 13 JanuaryStill of Brief Encounters on the Milky Way (2017), Xiaowen Zhu, HD video, 05:00ESSEX ROAD IV – eight contemporary artists interpret a very particular part of London.Edwina AshtonChloe Dewe MatthewsBenedict DrewJudith GoddardMatthew Noel-TodPaul TarragóRichard WentworthXiaowen ZhuNow in its fourth year, Tintype’s Essex Road invites eight artists to each make a short film connected to the mile-long north London street. The gallery’s large window, on a busy corner in Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year. The films are back-projected into the window, shown on a loop from dusk to 11pm, highly visible to a broad-range of the general public who pass by the gallery. Still of Brief Encounters on the Milky Way (2017), Xiaowen Zhu, HD video, 05:00XIAOWEN ZHU is an artist, filmmaker and writer whose work communicates the complex experience of being a diasporic person. Her film Oriental Silks, (2015) explored the story of one shop, a silk emporium in Los Angeles, revealing the intricate relationship between people and objects in a migrant world. Zhu’s film Brief Encounters on the Milky Way documents the encounters of an astronaut on Essex Road. Switching between walking down the street and standing behind a large shop-window, the astronaut appears to be a test of tolerance and openness towards something unusual, unfamiliar and unexpected. Passers-by, attracted and bemused by the bizarre sight, become participants in this brief encounter.ABOUT ESSEX ROADEssex Road is in the borough of Islington, London. It is roughly a mile long stretching from the Angel to Balls Pond Road. Essex Road runs parallel to its more upmarket neighbour Upper Street and in fact used to be called Lower Road. It has a remarkable number of independent shops and small businesses and a strong neighbourhood identity. It is an area with marked social and economic divisions.For further information please contact Carla von der Becke at Albany Arts87 Gower Street | London | WC1E 6AF e: carla@albanyartscommunications.comt: + 44 (0) 20 73 88 09 97m: + 44 (0) 79 74 25 29 94w: www.albanyartscommunications.comWe are very grateful to Arts Council England and Islington’s Local Initiatives Fund for their support of this project.

Tintype Gallery Presents Xiaowen Zhu's New Work