After having studied painting at Chelsea School of Art during the 1960s, Guy Sherwin discovered experimental cinema, and became one of its major UK exponents. Sherwin was a key member of the London Filmmakers' Co-op where he began to experiment with laboratory techniques (such as developing and printing). His work, which ranges from film to installation to performance, is nearly always characterised by its interest in light and in time, the unavoidable fundamentals of the cinematic medium.
Railings is a film-installation in which the images are vertical iron bars which run across the screen in a continuous back-and-forth which ends up becoming hypnotic. The soundtrack printed on the film makes use of the same images, creating an unusual sensorial experience which raises the question - if it is the image which produces the sound, where does the image itself begin and end?