Stills from Heathrow

Heathrow (1994) contains the fantasy of flight and escape in an environment that tries to normalise what is, in fact, extraordinary. Narrative vignettes concentrate on passengers moving around the airport terminal while the warm grainy film quality gives this airport a luminosity, reflecting the mindset of the traveller. The sky is depicted as a form of mystic space where we might undergo a loss of self or become overwhelmed by elemental fear in the blue void. This meditative quality is ripped through by the palpable roar of a plane passing overhead. The camera witnesses passengers' ant-like comings and goings; their countenances conveying a sense of purpose, confusion or the joy of homecoming and reunion. In this early work Goodwin already uses the formal elements of video to poetic affect and he has sought out a place that allows this formalism to become more than the sum of its parts in grasping the genius loci of the airport.
 
(extract written by Simon Wallis in catalogue from Dryden Goodwin : Recent Video Works)