About the Film

In 2010 I travelled to Northampton to film American artist Stephen Mathewson’s first solo UK exhibition, My Heart Spins on the Grill, at The Fishmarket Gallery. This painting exhibition documentary film was also the first time I filmed on a Sony Z5, and the combination pushed me towards a more responsive, observational way of working with an artist in his own space. Looking back, it is one of the earlier painting exhibition documentary film projects in my archive, and one that still shapes how I approach filming inside a show rather than simply around it.

A Story Told Through Paint

Stephen’s paintings were unstretched and unprimed, hung more like relics than conventional gallery pieces. The work combined text, 1950s-style abstraction and fragments of invented storytelling, populated by recurring characters such as Charles, who discovers his father’s murder on Miami Beach, and Cat Fischermann, a fictional stand-up comedian rooted in an older New York jazz-club world. As Stephen put it, all the work came from one story, since otherwise you end up with stacks and stacks of random images rather than something that holds together.

This place has big walls. It’s a special chance to see the big works in one big space. And it turns out they’re pretty small… but they work.

Filming with the Sony Z5

The Z5’s balance of professional control and portability meant I could move freely through the gallery, staying close to Stephen’s gestures, his laughter and the casual way he talked through each piece. My approach was to let the artist set the rhythm of the film rather than impose one, which with Stephen meant long, unhurried takes and handheld shooting that kept pace with the energy of the space. Nothing was staged. It was a matter of trust between artist, camera and a story that was still finding its own shape. Working this way meant accepting a looser structure than a more scripted shoot would allow, following whichever painting or object Stephen wanted to talk about next rather than working through a predetermined list.

The Magic Flute

One of the film’s best moments is Stephen’s account of The Magic Flute, a sculpture made from leftover packaging, a cardboard tube and a plastic tube, painted gold.

It’s about using everything you have to make something new. Originally I just wanted to have a card on the wall, Magic Flute, no flute, just a card. But this one turns into the magical twenty billion pound flute, it’s the most incredible flute in the world, beyond magic.

That mix of seriousness and absurdity runs through the whole show, and moments like this are exactly what a painting exhibition documentary film should hold onto rather than smooth over.

A Raw and Honest Portrait

The film doesn’t try to explain every element of Stephen’s work. Instead it reflects the unpolished energy of both the exhibition and the Fishmarket itself, from stacked televisions repainted as surreal monuments to narratives that blur fact and fiction throughout. My Heart Spins on the Grill was an early milestone in my own practice too, an early lesson in letting an artist’s own language shape the film rather than imposing a structure from outside, and in trusting that a portrait can feel as experimental as the work it is documenting. Watching the footage back now, what still holds up is how little of it needed explaining even at the time, the space and Stephen’s voice carried the whole thing.

It shares that spirit with two later films from the same gallery, Feast of Fools and Hiker Meat by Jamie Shovlin, both made at the Fishmarket in the years that followed.