Echo

Echo is an art film by Mark Westgarth.  It was made as part of the Year of the Dealer project as a piece of creative interpretation foregrounding some of the key ideas underpinning the research project.

The film is 6 minutes 36 seconds in length, sampling sections from a black and white film of antique dealers at an auction at Christie's in London in 1926.  It is structured in nine 'segments' each of which surfaces the repetition of particular gestures, emblematic of the art market, in a rhythmic and hypnotic series of 'Echoes'.

Echo aims to reveal these gestures as a performance of knowledge and to highlight how such gestures can become invisible through their inherently cyclical, repetitive nature.  The film prompts us to reflect further on the ways in which the art market, through its process and practices, structures our encounters with antiques.

Echo will be shown at Temple Newsam, Leeds, during the summer of 2026 as part of the wider engagement with the Year of the Dealer project.  Details of the showing of Echo will be updated soon.