Amaal Said's work Open Country (2025) features in the solo exhibition 'Between Here and Elsewhere' opening at Forma, 15 Bermondsey Square on Thursday 26 February.
Grounded in Said’s lived experience, the exhibition reflects on complex questions around identity and belonging - exploring a sense of dissonance and dislocation felt by first and second generation migrants living in Britain. It brings together Said’s recently commissioned film - Open Country (2025) - in dialogue with a new photographic installation that unfolds across the length of Forma’s window gallery.
In the film, the artist asks what it means to yearn for a connection to a place and to others, whilst exposing the vulnerability that can arise through difference and prejudice. The recurring images on the gallery walls depict the characters caught in moments of reflection, echoing the architecture of the space and relaying a quiet tension in Said’s work.
Open Country was originally co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers, as part of a multi-partner project titled ‘The Open Road’. Presenting Said’s moving image work alongside these newly conceived photographic elements in Bermondsey holds particular resonance as, set just beyond the Old Kent Road and near to the artists’ home, the gallery lies on the historical route of pilgrimage from London to Canterbury where the journey of the film begins and ‘The Open Road’ series draws its inspiration.
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Open Country was commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Image: Amaal Said, ‘Open Country (I)’, 2025. Digital photograph. © and courtesy the artist. Funded by Arts Council England. Supported by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers.
