A Situation Envisaged: The Rite (1980)

‘Sixteen domestic TV receivers are arranged in a circle; each facing away from the viewer into the enclosed space; each playing a different TV channel from the next.. A videotape playing on a revolving monitor is glimpsed at the centre through small gaps.. each so fine that vision is restricted.. suggesting an attempt to assemble information coherently as the viewer moves from one to the next. In doing so, the continuum is broken. Expectations of narrative progression are both implied and rejected.. …

A Situation Envisaged: The Rite II (Cultural Eclipse) 1989

David HALL: SITUATIONS ENVISAGED. Richard Saltoun Gallery,
17 July—14 August 2015 London

David Hall’s installation presents a tower of monitors facing the wall; their TV broadcasts appear eclipsed and their original message transformed into an aura of coloured light and musical score (composed by David Cunningham). One monitor, in the centre, shows a 30-line image like those used in the historical transmissions of John Logie Baird in the 1920s. The piece comments on the iconic and magical nature of electricity and communication technologies. …

Delineations (1977)

‘Delineations involved the use of two tape loops, one audio the other video, stretched around the circumference of two identical and adjacent rooms. On the audio tape I made a recording of my journey around the space at the tape speed of 7 1/2 inches per second, pointing out items of interest and indicating my position in the room. On the videotape I recorded a similar journey around the other space at the tape speed of 15 inches per second. …

Sentences (1988-1993

“Some of these ideas are drawn out in their purest form by the Sentences series, 1988-93, in various languages and formats. The hints of linguistic philosophy, its word-games and literalness, which permeate the earlier works, are here centred on screen. The sentences in the cycle are self-referential tautologies, near-complete propositions which encompass all their elements – including graphic signs such as full stops. The digital play of letters is complements by a pop-mix soundtrack, so that the austerity of the printed word enters a more demotic or popular sound-space, …

Vide Voce (The Threes in The Four)

“As a pure example of ‘landscape video’ in Partridge’s output, Interrun is in the larger tradition of landscape art – and on the grand scale. It also shares the radical revisioning of landscape pioneered by such structural filmmakers as Chris Wrelsby and William Raban, but is more specifically preceded by a Partridge-Cunningham landscape video made with singer and performer Mary Phillips, Vide Voce, 1986. Coincidentally, structuralist like Raban and Welsby also questioned the ecological and political aspects of landscape in their films of the 1980’s and thereby took their earlier work beyond their original goal of pure observation. …

One Thousand and One Boys Games (1984)

‘1001 Boys Games was based on a poem written by the painter John Yeadon in 1983. It combines computer-generated drawings by Yeadon from his Impossible Lovers series, with animation and digital video effects in a stream of images complementing the narration of the poem by the dramatist Tom McGrath. In addition to conventional camera-originated material and artwork, a Quantel Paintbox and a BBC micro computer were used to create the hundreds of ‘cells’ featured in the work.’ …

Soundtapes (1982)

‘Made in response to a cassette full of soundworks sent to me by David Cunningham sometime in 1981. The ones I used were titled “Voice”, “Body “, and “Rapid”. David went on to use them as different versions on his CD “GhostDance” and “voiceworks” and forgot about the versions he had sent to me-although he did use images from “The Sounds of These Words” for the front and back covers of “voiceworks”. …

Black Skirt (1979)

‘A second sequence of a walking woman (a key theme in art from Duchamp to Giacometti and Michael Snow) asserts actual space, here an art school corridor, and then depicts closely related staggered shots of a woman repeatedly crossing her legs until a final glimpsed moment of voyeuristic revelation.’ Al Rees …

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