“One of the earliest but still the longest and most complicated work I have made in video, I was very preoccupied with the paintings of Cezanne. I think there was an important exhibition of his works at the time, but I had not seen and indeed was not aware that Malcolm LeGrice had addressed a similar preoccupation with Cezanne in film and in a very different way. I was also concerned with the fate of Steve Beko a prominent ANC activist who was eventually murdered by the South African Police while in custody. When he was under house arrest he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time and I was interested in making a work for an audience which encapsulated the enforced intimacy and power relationship implied by this provision. I wanted the work to address wider issues than the specific case of Beko and used a female actor rather than a male. The piece was intended to impossibly drive together the formal aspects of Cezanne’s paintings with the political implications of Beko’s incarceration. I regard the resultant work as a conversation between Beko and Cezanne of the question of colour.” Mick Hartney, March 2008

Leaflet for the Arnolfini video library, Bristol, includes information on the work ‘Orange Free State’.pdf here