Peng Zuqiang, ‘Afternoon Hearsay’ (2025). Film still. Courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space.
‘Afternoon Hearsay’, the first solo exhibition by Peng Zuqiang in Scotland, centres on a new three-channel film installation of the same name, co-commissioned by The Common Guild and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai.
The film, ‘Afternoon Hearsay’, is concerned with the nature of image-making and the ways in which cultural, historical and political narratives are shared and disseminated. It evokes a partial history of 8.75mm film stock: a film format unique to China, manufactured between the 1960s and 1980s.
Peng Zuqiang, ‘Afternoon Hearsay’ (2025). Film still. Courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space.
A lightweight, portable film, exactly one quarter the width of 35mm stock, 8.75mm was used as a projection medium around remote and rural regions where mobile projection units (makeshift cinemas) brought educational and propogandist entertainment to communities beyond the city. A dedicated camera device was never created for the 8.75mm film, instead, this format relied on transfers from 35mm film, raising the central question of Peng’s work: What is a film without a camera?
Cameraless filmmaking techniques and legacies of structural filmmaking are at the centre of ‘Afternoon Hearsay. Archival 8.75mm prints are photogrammed onto 16mm and 35mm colour negative print stock and woven together with contemporary Super 8 footage shot by Peng. By doing so, Peng creates images of film strips that merge, burn, and tear through chromatic space. Interlayered and overlapping images coalesce with fragments of optical sound and narratives from unnamed interlocutors. The installation conjures an ambiguous and expansive temporal space in which the boundaries of fact and fiction are indistinguishable and immaterial, whilst the solidity of memory is foregrounded through the sensorial materiality of film.
‘Afternoon Hearsay’ is pieced together from hearsay, rumour and the imagination. It is as much a story of alternative cinema spaces as a record of significant places and people erased by history and rapid change. Through his research and meditations on cameraless image-making and photochemical abstraction, Peng reflects on the violence, tragedy and suppression of truthful image circulation.
‘Afternoon Hearsay’ will be accompanied by new and recent works by the artist.
Peng Zuqiang, ‘Déjà vu’ (2023). Installation view, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2024. Photo: Sander van Wettum. Courtesy of the artist.
About the artist /
Peng Zuqiang (b. 1992, Changsha, China) works with film, video and installation. Recent solo presentations include Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2023); Kevin Space, Vienna (2023); Cell Project Space, London (2022); E-Flux screening room, New York (2022); and Antenna-Tenna, Shanghai (2021). Group exhibitions and screenings include UCCA Beijing (2024); Times Museum, Guangzhou (2024); 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo (2023); The Physics Room, Christchurch (2023); CCA Berlin (2023); Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, UK (2022) Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2022); OCAT x KADIST Emerging Media Artist Program, OCAT, Shanghai (2022); Macalline Art Center (MACA), Beijing (2022); Times Art Center, Berlin (2021); and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (2020).
Peng graduated from the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2024, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 and Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. He is a recipient of the Present Future Prize at Artissima (2022), and the Dialog Award from EMAF Osnabrück (2023–24). Residencies and fellowships include Art Explora, Paris; Skowhegan, Maine; and the Core Program, Texas. He lives and works in between Amsterdam and Paris.
Further Info
Exhibition Details
Visit
11 October – 7 December 2025. Preview Friday 10 October, 6–8pm.
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 12–5pm & Sunday, 12–4pm
Free entry
Access
The exhibition takes place across two rooms on the second floor of 5 Florence Street. The Library is on the ground floor and open during exhibition hours.
The building has step free access.
Accessible toilets are available.
The nearest subway station is Bridge Street, a 14 minute walk away.
‘Afternoon Hearsay’ is supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture grant programme.
