All Suffering SOON TO END! screening at Tate Britain

Jennet Thomas' single-screen film All Suffering SOON TO END! gets another outing, this time as part of the Assembly - Ceremony II programme at TATE Britain on 9 December.(7pm - 9pm, Tickets £5 from TATE).

All Suffering SOON TO END! was first presented at Matts Gallery in 2010.

Thomas takes a contemporary evangelical pamphlet as her inspiration. The pamphlet describes the ‘the end of days,’ and is both tender and lyrical in part, then suddenly savagely violent and ridiculous.

An imagined characterisation of the pamphlet’s author acts as the film’s main protagonist. This passionate and sinister Purple Preacher is a conflation of fundamentalist preacher and cartoon super villain from 60s and 70s Marvel comics, The Purple Man, whose superpower lies in his ability to instantly convince and persuade.

Calling at the comfortable home of an elderly suburban couple the Purple Preacher uses his sinister allure on the unwitting residents. A hypnotic slide show, life-sized Adam and Eve rubber dolls, a visit from a mysterious green nun, a disconcerting trip to a miniature model village in which perfect and parallel imperfect worlds are portrayed, and an impromptu gig in the garage, are amongst the surreal tools the preacher employs to illustrate his sermon, whilst unwittingly foretelling his own destruction.

At moments sinister and disturbing whilst at others charming and enchanting, this mesmerizing world of surreal repetition bombards the senses. A speculative exploration into cultural forms of ‘belief’ and representation, this darkly comic work satirizes the persuasive rhetoric of fanaticism, and begs the question:

WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO RULE?
AND WHOSE RULE IS RIGHT?

Still from All Suffering SOON TO END! Tiago Gambogi and Nikki Tomlinson as Adam and Eve.