Seemingly artless, these virtual home movies, oddly gorgeous, are attuned to incidents of unplanned geometry and smartly paced to slow your heartbeat. In 1999 Ms. Dean filmed a dairy farm in Cornwall during a solar eclipse. The work lasts more than an hour. A man in red overalls leads a herd of Holsteins toward a meadow. A crow flies past Constable-like clouds.
Wood pigeons roost on telephone wires.
The sky darkens. Ready to leave what I thought was an empty room, I heard a voice in the blackness tell me to wait, the good part was coming. The voice belonged to a guard on his break. He explained that he had watched the film several times. It was restful, he said.