Powerful tales of transition

Isaac Julien: Paradise Omeros/ Baltimore

The breadth and depth of film artist Isaac Julien's vision is eloquently displayed in this latest exhibition, which presents two of his most recent pieces and related photographic works.

Paradise Omeros, re-cut from a triptych piece to just one screen, is a powerful look at otherness and displacement through the medium of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s. The young protagonist (Hansil Jules) switches from moving through the lush, dreamlike landscape of St Lucia to the cold, steely cityscape of London, trying to find a way to express himself verbally (not in Kweyol) and emotionally (as his growing awareness of his homosexuality is suggested).

Derek Walcott's poetry and references to Charles Laughton's film The Night Of The Hunter echo through the piece, which resonates with a sense of confinement and despair. The film speaks of genuine recalled memories just as much as a wider meditation on difference, which lends it a beguiling power.

Kept in its triple-screen format, Baltimore, his most recent work, plays with concepts of high art and popular culture by breaking down genre distinctions, a favourite area of exploration for Julien. Inspired by his own recent documentary, Baadasssss Cinema, Julien takes the styles, language and iconography of blaxploitation films and reinterprets them to explore the idea of what art is.

Two characters, iconic blaxploitation filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles and guntoting cyborg Vanessa Myrie, pursue each other through Baltimore's Great Blacks In Wax and Walters museums.

Stumbling upon a collection of waxworks that have 'broken out' and are contemplating a collection of classical European paintings, Van Peebles also confronts a waxwork of himself: past, present and future merging.

It's a funny, funky piece that asks pertinent questions about artistic classifications - and is brilliantly displayed here in a huge, bare, concrete room, which lets the film envelop you completely.