Terry Flaxton: A Life in Video Art 1976 - 2023
Preview Friday 6th October 6 - 11pm, then open to the public, Saturday 7th October to Sunday 5th November
Open Fridays, Saturdays, & Sundays between 11am until 5pm at Roseberry Road Studios: 28 Roseberry Rd, Bath BA2 3DX
The exhibition is structured as an upward journey through Terry Flaxton's Development over 50 years of making Video Art. This will be revealed in an upward journey upward through four floors and over 50 works of art at Roseberry Studios Bath.
The Human Form is situated on the ground floor and takes our physical and mental state as a metaphor for our relationship to 'reality'. The proposition here is that we look inward, to then take a measure of the world outwardly. Shown across three screens in sets of portraits of people from around the world are presented as a means of gauging the nature of what is inside us, looking out.
After a series of increasingly complex propositions about what we are and what reality is, the 2 hour sequence is completed by Signs and Symbols of the Human Condition.....
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Terry Flaxton recorded his first sound piece in 1969 and made his first film in 1971 - he has been exhibiting internationally since the mid-seventies after coming across video in 1976) He has been been a writer and director for the BBC and Channel 4 making a series of programmes on the subject of Video Art as well as work on Superpowers Foreign policy. He retained his knowledge of cinematographer and has worked with such artists as Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Queen Latifa, Van Morrison, Mariah Carey, Harry Belafonte, Sting, Kire Te Kanawa & Madonna and then later moved into academia where he researched high resolution imaging became a professor of cinematography and directed The Centre for Moving Image Research at UWE into the subject. He obtained a PhD in high resolution disciplines. His installations have exhibited to audiences of over 1.2 million in New York at the Cathedral of St John the Divine several times. He is an Academician at the RWA and a Fellow of the RPS.
Much of the work here is available on Sedition Art
GROUND FLOOR: THE HUMAN FORM 3 Screens - 11 works 2012 - 2023.....and through image based metaphor, the participation of carnival and circus people, and the use of a symphonic musical composition by Flaxton, how we inhabit our own world and how our differing motivations create an undesired effect on the planet are examined.
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Private View, 5pm till 10pm October 6th Opening times Friday to Sunday, 10am 7pm, until 5th November - please check the website as there will be additional events during the month including the premier of a new long form work from Mexico.
The image below is from Day of the Dead (2019), the image to the left is Portraits of the Arrow Tower Beijing
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FIRST FLOOR: Landscapes and Installations - 13 works 2008 - 2021 |
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FIRST FLOOR: LANDSCAPES: Situated on the first floor Landscapes again provides the audience with a way of interpreting their own response to the work they are now to experience. This is intended to be a way to map ourselves in an unfamiliar way, building on the insights provided by the looking at the human form - now instead of looking inward to look outward - we look outward to look inward.
The image above is from is from Dance Floor (2008)
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FIRST FLOOR: INSTALLATIONS: A principle installation to be found here is In Other People's Skins which was exhibited in 8 UK Cathedrals (including the nearby Bath Abbey), and a series of countries including China, Italy, Sweden and this finally arrived for two six month runs at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York playing to around 2.4 million visitors. Its sister installation, The Intersection of Dreams also show in New York, is re-presented on the first floor and invokes Dalis Crucifixion of St John. 5 works 1992 - 2023
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The Video above is from In Other People's Skins (1993 - 2015). This travelled to 8 Cathedrals in the UK (and Bath Abbey) then on to China, Italy Malta, the USA (the Cathdral of St John the Divine in New York) and several other countries.
The Image in the centre is from In Re Ansel Adams (2008) |
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INTERMEDIATE FLOOR: Early Work
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INTERMEDIATE FLOOR Early Work from 1977 - 2010: Early Work steps back in time and is an attempt to throw Flaxton's current work into relief. This can be found on The intermediate floor between the second and top floor of Roseberry Studios and provides a stopping off point to reflect.
This work charts Flaxton's development from discovering film in 1971 as a medium of expression, via Analogue Video in 1976. There is work represented here from his early days working for Apple and a variety of International companies such as Universal who employed him to capture classical, rock and pop acts |
As time passed he started a company that made documentaries for Channel 4 and he also worked for the BBC. He shot the 3rd ever electonically captured to be released on 35mm film for the BFI and Channel 4. 12 works 1977 - 2010
The image above is from Zagorsk (1992) where Flaxton discovered a KGB Cathedral used for storing the political records of dissenters. |
Flaxton became aware of High Definition in the late 80's and early 90's and how this in turn affected his work during the lead up to the arrival of Digital Cinematography in the late 90's, where he then tested this new high resolution form for both Sony and Panasonic, through to his use of it as a senior researchfellow at University of Bristol until 2010.
The image above is from is from Postards from Beijing (2010).
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THIRD FLOOR, Into the Void: 2023 and Beyond, 3 collections - 18 works 2021 - 2023 |
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These latest works can be found on the third and top floor of Roseberry Studios. This summation of Flaxton's current work consists of 3 multi-part collections of the works: "Anthropocene", "Immeasurable Heaven" and "Entangled". "Anthropocene" consisting of 5 parts creates the surround for Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. 2021 "Immeasurable Heaven: The Laniakean Paradigm" 2022 also a 5 part work, reflects on astronomers (todays version of 14th century mapmakers) who have mapped the new world of Laniakea, a Hawaiian word to describe the immensity of Heaven, because this is the largest tract of nearby space ever mapped. 'Entangled' proposes that what we invent is simply an extension of our potential future state.
The image to the top right, is from Entangled (2022) |
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In his book Origins of the Modern Mind the neuroscientist Merlin Donald proposes that we began exporting knowledge into the environment with sacred trees and megaliths, then learned to write and placed that knowledge in scrolls, papyri, codex, then books - and TV and Radio and now digital computers. So quantum knowledge is the next step of exporting that knowledge - or that which we are - out of our 'frame' and into the environment we inhabit. Theosophists speak about this as "the involution and evolution of spirit into and out of matter". Finally the eight part Entangled: The Human Gaze in an Age of Quantum Entanglement asks us to reflect on how we make tools to manipulate the world, which in turn affect and manipulate our experience of the world.
The image at the bottom left is from Anthropcene (2021) |
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As a youth I painted and drew - and then was subsequently invited to join Wimbledon College of Art's Foundation course in 1971 (at 18), where I discovered sculpture, photography, stained glass, etching and other disciplines and then I made my first sound piece, my first film (and later my first video in 1976). The years went by and I threw in my lot with the making of moving images and latterly I became a professor of cinematography and gained a PhD in high-resolution imaging. So - some 50 years after entering on this course, in my mind, this retrospective will represent a conversation, if not a negotiation, between myself and the audience about the nature of making art at a transitional stage of human history asking: can art affect an improvement in how we relate to our world?
The proliferation of technological solutions to the creation of word and image has placed a bomb within human culture (and that is without even considering the ecological downsides, which are huge). The idea that words alone can make images, sounds, shapes and so on, neglects some crucial trajectories that we have been on as a species for millennia. For instance the opposable thumb which sits at the basis of grasping tools such as a paint brush or a chisel and making marks with materials is threatened - but that it itself started a century ago with Duchamp's questioning of what lay at the basis of the creation of art - acts or ideas? But now these ideas have become crucial to any thinking artist who attempts to make a meaningful piece of art. My own medium has previously been looked down upon in some artistic quarters and yet the public have embraced it as an art form - as has the RA who have appointed two old friends who practice this discipline to their number. So: something, somewhere has shifted. And this is not to denigrate the plastic arts - sole images and shapes can still have currency, but the line is now drawn with regard the idea of the self-identification of the artist - now the issue must be: prove yourself as an artist with staying power, before you simply use the term 'artist' for your acts. |
I first took that step when there were far less artists and now we are beyond number. So all I really want to do with this exhibition - and this is not my first retrospective, so I've travelled along the road where different stages of exhibition have different meanings to a person, so this retrospective is to ask two things of a visitor after having experienced what I have to say in my work:
1) look upon my works and give consideration to my maintenance of practice over 50 years and if you can see an evolution and some consistency and a through line then let's come to some agreement about what this all means. 2) As a body of work, does it answer the only meaningful question any artist can ask (in contemporary parlance): have I added to or subtracted from 'the mix' of human culture? If we can both answer yes, then we've both benefited. To Stand and Stare a Somerset Landscape, developed from a project from 2011: The Monumental Portraits of the Working People of Somerset, which itself grew out of the portraiture projects I'd been making since 2008 (this was co-directed by Charlotte Humpston). This also relates to earlier documentary work but incorporates elements of video art, which is why I offer it up here.
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More information on Terry Flaxton's Website