The Open Road is a series of artists moving image works, co-commissioned by a partnership of visual arts organisations; Film and Video Umbrella, The Amelia Scott, Cement Fields, FLAMIN, Forma, and Three Rivers.
The Open Road reimagines the age-old tale of a journey taken, weaving together new stories by three contemporary artists. The works are loosely inspired by The Canterbury Tales, drawing from a disparate cast of characters to recount competing stories in a patchwork of styles.
David Blandy, Amaal Said and Sam Williams each draw on storytelling traditions to give fresh perspectives on their journeys, on foot, by sea and through time. The newly commissioned works meander through reflections on migration and belonging, untold histories and non-human connections. A smashed mobile phone decries its extraction, removed, returned and dug out from the earth. A daughter recounts a meandering walk with her mother, connecting with the earth underfoot and a land far away. An eel’s story of migration and transformation weaves through the lives and landscapes of the Kent wetlands.
The Open Road begins in September 2025 with Commons by David Blandy at The Amelia Scott in Tunbridge Wells, continuing with Amaal Said’s Open Country at Red House in October 2025, and then on to The Eel’s Tale by Sam Williams with screenings in North Kent and as a part of Canterbury Festival in November 2025.
The works will be screened together at FormaHQ on the evening of Thursday 13th November 2025. More screenings and events will take place between September and December 2025 and early 2026.
The Open Road is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, The Amelia Scott, Cement Fields, FLAMIN, Forma, and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Projects
The Open Road will extend across London and Kent in 2025 and 2026, encompassing a series of solo presentations, community engagement initiatives, and curated screenings.
The Amelia Scott, Tunbridge Wells
David Blandy, Commons
26 September 2025 – 11 January 2026
Red House, Bexleyheath
Amaal Said, Open Country
2, 3 & 5 October 2025
North Kent*
Sam Williams, The Eel’s Tale
November 2025
Canterbury Festival, Kent (Screening)
Sam Williams, The Eel’s Tale
1 November 2025
FormaHQ, London (Screening)
David Blandy, Amaal Said, and Sam Williams
13 November 2025
Forma, London*
Amaal Said, Open Country
February – March 2026
*Further details to follow
Amaal Said is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses visual storytelling and community engagement. Born in Denmark to Somali parents, her photography has been featured in Vogue, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. She has exhibited internationally and received the Southwark Council’s I Create grant for her film Notes on Getting Home in 2022. As a Picture Researcher at Hyphen, she curates visuals to amplify Muslim narratives. Amaal holds an MA in Art & Politics from Goldsmiths and a BA in Politics from SOAS.
David Blandy is an artist examining global structures of control and networks of resistance, in areas that range from ecology, history and science to arenas of play. He makes videos, games, sound and ephemera, deconstructing forms to put them back together again. He searches for meaning in cultural life, an expanded form for auto-anthropology, sifting through multiple forms of archive, from historic texts to academic archives, archaeology and ecological theory, twitch streams and film archives; Blandy weaves lyrical works that explore the complexities of the contemporary subject. He builds complex stories that sketch out a future of interdependence, through visual poetry and immersive play.
He has exhibited & performed at venues nationally and worldwide, with solo shows at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; The Exchange, Newlyn; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany. Blandy has also exhibited in museums and screenings internationally including at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Festival 2024; Serpentine Gallery, London; LA Film Forum, Los Angeles; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Tate Modern, London; MoMA PS1, New York & 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. He was nominated for the Film London Jarman award with Larry Achiampong in 2018.
David Blandy is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. His films are distributed by LUX, London.
Sam Williams is an artist with a practice that intertwines moving-image, collage, choreography, sound and writing. His ongoing research focuses on multispecies entanglements, ecological systems, bodies-as-worlds and folk mythologies and how they propose possibilities for present and future ways of non-human-centric living. Sam is based in London where he is a resident at Somerset House Studios. He has presented work at institutions including Chisenhale Gallery, Arnolfini, Siobhan Davies Dance, Somerset House, Tate Britain, Studio Voltaire and South Kiosk (UK), She Will (Norway); Röda Sten Konsthall (SE); Kino Arsenal, Akademie der Kunst, Tanzhalle Wisenberg and B3 Biennale (Germany).
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