bill of regret

In The Reversal, Jennifer Boles engages the archive – and foregoes making new images in favour of repurposing existing ones. Photographs of the reversal of the Chicago River at the turn of the nineteenth century unfurl to an appropriately machine-like rhythm. The result is a haunting, black-and-white evocation of the efforts of anonymous men whose collective labour – and, often, lives – went into this capital-driven reorganisation of nature.

In 14th Century England, this tale of murder and mystery follows a fugitive priest who falls in with a troupe of actors. As they arrive in a small town, the actors encounter a woman being sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft and murder. Discarding the expected bible stories, the actors now stage a performance based on the crime. Through the performance of the play, they discover a mystery.

In the aftermath of the Great Plague and amidst the subsequent witch-hunts against women, a young widow grapples with the tragic death of her husband in a society completely consumed by fear and death. Because she rejects the advances of her landlord, she is falsely accused of being a witch and thrown in jail for a crime she didn’t commit. She must endure physical persecution at the hands of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter and face her own inner demons as the devil himself starts to work his way into her mind.

A man regrets