The principle plot centres around the buzzing commentary of the adolescent BoyDriver, a child of the computer game generation, and his journey and rite-of-passage through a country too small to make a road movie in – even if you drive slowly. His objective is to seek out the unseen and unknown character called Frank.
As much a joy ride through the imagination as a road movie through a real place, the BoyDriver’s commentary (heard only in voice over) directs us through his thoughts, …
London – Berlin – Graft – details of video screenings including Pictorial Heroes’ Reflection on the art of the state.pdf here
Review of Pictorial Heroes’ Reflection on the art of the state by Steven Bode for City Limits.pdf here
Review of Pictorial Heroes’ Reflection on the art of the state by Nik Houghton for Independent Media, 1988.pdf here …
An extract from a television commercial:
‘An event seen from one angle gives one impression. Seen from another angle it gives quite a different impression. But its only when you get the whole picture that you can really see what’s going on.’
Sniper explores in a series of short episodes, actions, gestures and images, a number of themes of a broad cultural and political nature. In particular, these are the notions of a media of surveillance and the jigsaw nature of interpreting events and experiences. …
Catalogue from 4.Videonale in Bonn includes information on ‘Sniper’.pdf here
Letter from Scottish Television plc, regarding the work ‘Sniper’.pdf here
Letter from The Smith Biennial Exhibition, 1987, regarding the work ‘Sniper’.pdf here
Programme for the French Institute to be shown February 16th 1988 – a personal selection by Anna Ridley. Includes ‘Sniper’.pdf here
‘Made in Scotland’ …
Firstly, it has become increasingly evident that as you drive into the heart of any urban city, one is always aware of the great hinterlands of desolation on the periphery, tracts of industrial architecture laid to waste and housing schemes decaying as you glance at them. A glance is often all you are afforded as they are usually shielded from view by baffle banks, landscape schemes, curtain walling, embankments, or the inter-weaving complexes of fly-overs, …
‘1986 – after all the words and images – this is what’s left. A fragment found on a wasteland somewhere in Britain.’
Looking back, this work was a response to – amongst other things – the continued laying to waste of the country’s industrial heartlands >> a sense of lost energy >> the climate of the country after the Miners Strike >>the bombing of Libya by the USA >>a reflection on the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, …
Press release detailing information on the ‘Faction>’ works, and biographical information.pdf here …
‘The Cover Up’ takes the form of an improvised diatribe spread over several years of Conservative Party rule, by a member of this country’s ‘underlying trend’. In addressing a number of subjects and events that evolved over the period – unemployment, unions, the role of art making, unemployment, civil defence, economic policy, unemployment, Iran, Hysel, Chernobyl, bureaucracy, hypocracy, unemployment… – the tape takes two differing styles, an un-coordinated rant across a range of issues by a man wandering King Leah-like through a desolate factory site and the interjection of a sophisticated ‘voice of reason’ …
