Behold is a kind of homage to Edweard Mubridges pioneering Motion Picture Studies (1878/85). Looking back it does seem to mark a significant shift in my practice, moving from single screen work to expanded cinema and installation in the gallery context. At the time I did not own any video equipment, it was too expensive, usually you had to beg, steal or borrow what you wanted to use. I saw the gallery more as a laboratory not an end point, …
This is the second version of the work 60 TV Sets which was part of the exhibition A Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain, Gallery House, London 1972. It was exhibited as 101 TV Sets at The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London 1975
‘Although no video is directly involved (the TV sets are tuned or mis-tuned to broadcast signals, and all parameters of picture quality variously utilised) this is an important precursor of British multi-channel video installation work…’ …
On the basis of seeing Beginning the BBC commissioned ‘Entering’ as a short version
Page for The Video Show Catalogue, Exhibition 1-25th of May 1975, Serpentine Gallery, London. pdf here. …
Flyer for exhibition (Arts Council) 1980. pdf here.
“Merging-Emerging is the first of Donebauer’s tapes to incorporate representational imagery. The title of the work refers to the emerging of the human form, initially unrecognisable but gradually emerging through the quality and nature of the movement, and finally through the slowly shifting focus of the cameras. Donebauer has often used defocused cameras in his work, a technique he found liberating.
‘One day when I was working in the studio at the Royal College, …
