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Billy in the Lowground is the first live-action film by artist Mary Simpson and writer-curator-musician Fionn Meade, and it’s built around the haunting, centuries-old murder ballad “Pretty Polly,” performed in the film by the Foghorn String Band. In a conversation that ranges from Alaska to Joan Didion and the Greek word nostos, Meade, and Simpson circumnavigate the dark heart of what they’ve made, which is on display at Punch Gallery. <a href="http://www.punchgallery.org/exhibitions/2006-11.html"<www.punchgallery.com

Check out Jen Graves’s short review of Billy in the Lowground here.

For more of Mary Simpson’s work, see Graves’s review of her show earlier this year at 4 Culture Gallery.

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...