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Terry Flaxton & Charlotte Humpston
We two have worked together on a series of projects with myself creating the installations and Charlotte art directing many of the elements of my works - necessarily these have changed with her input. Below are the different series of works we've worked on together. Charlotte is an artist in her own right and her website is here. I first met Charlotte on a set where I'd just been commissioned by Illuminations for Channel 4 to write and direct "The World Within Us" for the Ghosts in the Machine steries. Charlotte, though an art director herself, had a partnership with Myra also an art director so that whoever picked up a job the other would assist.
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TThe World Within Us 1987 - 16 minutes
The World Within us was voiced by Johnathan Pryce and was a set of my poems to new digital imagery - this won prizes at Montbeliard and Locarno - There were going to be three parts to this work making an hour long piece but time and circumstance changed things. Part one originally prompted by a series of events, seeing Tavernier's Sunday in the Country (about a successful artist who contronts the fact that he'd never been authentic and true to his talent), reading A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper-Powis and the impending death of a thirty year old friend from cancer... |
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THE INEVITABILITY OF COLOUR
After making and exhibiting on Channel 4 The World Within Us I picked up another commission - another joint one, but this time between Arts Council England Channel 4, This was called The Inevitability of Colour and I proposed to Channel 4 that I took on Paul Virillio and Jean Baurilliard's ideas about where meaning for the human mind originated, It began with a 20 minute piece and then I made two other parts, Echo's Revenge and the other being The Object of Desire which was made with access to early digital equipment and a lot of string and sticky tape. Charlotte and I staged a set of images in our then kitchen and I took what we'd shot to a avriety of video post production houses and received favours to get access to high level equipment. These three parts became the Colour Trilogy and this was exhibited at the Bonne Biennale |
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IN OTHER PEOPLE'S SKINS
A year after the Colour Myths exhibited I was approached by the Bonne Biennale to make an installation which was to be called "White Goods" and a room would be assembled where a bed with a white cover, a white sofa, a dining table with a white tablecloth, a white washing machine and white refrigerator - all of which would have projections down on to them - like an old woman sleeping in the bed, an man sitting on the sofa with a cat - and a dinner party happening at the table.... Saddly the finance fell away - but one idea was persistent... In Other People's Skins started its life as The Dinner Party when I decoded tp fully imagine what it might be like to point a camera down on to a table where all you could see were the hands and arms, the plates and food whilst hearing the chatter of the people around the table. In fact I shot this in a room at my house and then took the result of 6 friends meeting where we served the meal and asked them to not place their heads near the table - simply their hands and arms as I would then project what occurred ona table top with 6 seats around it for the audience to sit. This went to the Glastonbury Festival very near where I live. Charlotte aided me in realising this. Some years later whilst becoming an academic and researching engagement times we created a standard definition version and an HD version of the DInner Party to research how much longer people would stay with an installation with increases of resolution. We created a version of The DInner PArt called n Other People's Skins and realised that a multiple of 4 times the resolution equalled twice as much engagement. The Square law. Equally I'd organised a tour of 8 cathedrals in the UK and In Other People's Skins begin to travel. Charlotte Art Directed this piece and later it was to go to Sweden, Italy (several times, several Cities), China Xi'an and finally THE USA where in the Cathdral of St John the Divine in New York it ran three times for six months each time where audiences were measured at around 1.2 million each time. 
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Below a major exhibition in London which Charlotte helped me stage - here you'll see a version of In Other People's Skins
Below a short example of the of one of the 'interventions' I had to make after I discovered people were becoming fixated on the reality of the dinner party - this segues after a inute into an exhibition of this work in Xi'an China where it made the front page of the Xi'an Daily (circulation 6 million!
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THE INTERSECTION OF DREAMS
Two x Six Month Exhibitions in the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York attracting 1.2 million visitors 2015, 2017 First iteration and opening at both Bristol Cathedral for two months and the Cathedral of St John the Divine in 2012 for six months. Visitor figures at Bristol was circa 56000 and New York 1.2 million in both 2105 and 2017. After In Other People's Skins had begun to travel I asked the VC's of both University of Bristol and The University of the West of England to contribute some money to a new idea I'd had whilst in Los Angeles - Initially I was at the Griffith Park Observatory but with no camera except my iphone - whilst in Australia I'd solve the problem of low resolution by taking a set of shots of Kings Canyon on my iphone and then mounting a set of around 20 HD images that were small in frame but when on an HD screen of a good size they held their resolution. Then looking down from a tower block in Los Feliz where I was staying I could a see an intersection of traffic. Slowly an idea grew in my mind. When back in the UK I approached those two VC's if they'd contribute to a restaging of Dali's Crucifixion where the CHrist Figure hung above the skyine's of a mash up of Bristol and LA comprised of many small shots. I asked Charlotte if she could make a 30 foot high cross and we erected it and asked my daughter and some of her friends to hang off that cross to represent todays youth crucified on the continuing ignorance of our older - supposedly wise leaders. Bristol Cathedral had a version with three screens within a cabinet that opened on the hour to emulate the 15th Century clock that also did the same. The cabinet had a large horizontal screen and the doors had two small portrait oriented screens on the inside which revealed when the cabinet opened. The New York Cathedral installation had a triptych of screens, one large screen in landscape and two in portrait. Both works opened at the same moment via a connection on facetime. The second iteration at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in 2015 was a three screen triptych on for six months with visitor figures at around 1.2 million also had a triptych of screens, one large screen in landscape and two in portrait. At that time the killing of a black youth in Fergusson had happened. When this work went back on at the Cathedral people asked me how I had know something awful was going to happen. Sometimes artists are around at the wrong time... The third Iteration at the Bishops Palace Wells had a large projection of 20 feet wide with all elements of the work - this was open for three months and attracted 15 thousand visitors |
Above a slightly playful version of a serious subject - the sound track is Rose Roge by St Germain
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