In 2014 I had noticed some movement with regard selling Moving Image Art and though there had been many attempts to achieve a  stable system (and all sorts of daft ideas like selling the equipment for playback as if that would both sanctify on a  fetishist level the form of capture and display and also 'add value to the work) until the arrival of Sedition, nothing had really worked (except people with a lot of money buy equipment based video art - and mainly US product with the odd one off from people like Isaac Julien from the UK.

So in 2015 Blain Southern put its money where its mouth was an started Sedtion Art. A platform where digtal editions were sold within a limited edition level.. On screen everyone could see the work - but it had a watermark on it - to get that removed you paid for the work. You couldn't download a work but you could have it kept online in the cloud where you could see your copy without a watermark.

Many curatirs who existed within the traditional valuation of moving image art couldn't abide sedition arguing that the work was 'too cheap' and continue to turn their noses up at the work available to maintain control of primarily their own jobs and also at the same time maintaining the idea of 'a bastion of taste' - that is the art gallery as temple of culture.

Personally, as a socialist at heart (one side of me) I've always wanted ordinary people to not only appreciate moving image art, but also be able to afford it. So I dived deep into Sedition. It's now 2023 coming up 2024, so nearly 8/9 years and I have around 70 works on the platform made between 2006 and the present day on sedition which you can see at this URL SEDITION ART. I'm the 9th most collected artist on Sedition (out of a few thousand in total and maybe 500 curated artists, I'm not dead sure because I haven't counted fully). In terms of being followed I'm the eighteenth most followed (but I figure being collected is more potent than being followed. Curators are still against sedition as if it somehow traduces art within galleries, but I fgure that they have a job to defend so they're not likely to change very soon - and notably they were mostly against blockchain and NFT's (of which I had success when it was eing introduced - see here click to go to makersplace. Neon Barcode Jesus in a Barcode World.

I guess if you look through this history you'll have noticed Sedition represents about 33 per cent of my output from 1976 onwards - so yes, I have become galvanised in my generation of ideas within the moving image medium from online exposure. But do remember my installation work - and as a for instance my retrospective featured one of my most successful installations: In Other People's Skins. And a last comment - in taking down my most recent retrospective I found myself writing this: 

"Yesterday I dismantled my retrospective at the end of which was a salient moment as the very last people to come sit at my table installation were a mother with her daughter and a young son. It turned out that the young woman had just finished at University of the Arts London and was, like me, some 40 plus years ago, wondering just what to do next. I told her a few things about continuing practice and as I was speaking to her my background hum was of this moment where I presented to the world my years of activity in making moving image art.

I'd had retrospectives and one man shows before - As early as 1986 Triple Vision (which was formed after Vida 1976 - 1980) was asked to present work at the Mill Valley Film Festival and I found myself sitting in a row with Jim Jarmusch, Jean-Jacques Beineix, David Drummond and Roberto Beningi - jet lagged and feeling like an impostor (and later debated with them the potential of video to supersede film which they knew would come as they were bright) and later presenting a retrospective of 10 years of making work with both Vida and Triple Vision.

In 2010 I had a big show in London with about 15 screens - some quite large - and later I had a small retrospective in Rome, and now this latest in Bath. So my overriding sense and background hum is about the continuity of making work - exhibiting is important and this latest one gave me a similar response to all the others: the audience always responds very warmly and often people are quite moved by my work - and I say that because it's true and it's also humbling on one level and does not swell my ego because I know that I’m simply the vessel for this work to appear through and sometimes I get mad at the compliments and sometimes I have no emotion about it.

And it's also true that as my wife said: How come the art world is deaf and blind to you and your work?

There are a set of answers to that but fundamentally it's the wrong question. One might sink back into the hope that later, after you pass a researcher might discover what you actually did (because the histories are inadequate and incorrect) - but that's just a fantasy. All you can really possibly hope for is that someone will find what you have done worthwhile.

In the end I said to the young woman, because she was true and honest - and in fact I’d seen her sitting alone a couple of weeks before in the highest room where my most recent work was showing: Find some people like yourself, form a collective, support each other, make and show your work. If you need money, get work in an associated field, curation, making moving image art or if need be anyhow you can but simply keep making - keep the practice going - and although everyone around will be saying "see my work" and the voices will grow to huge proportions, and you may feel inundated - do not give up.

​In persevering you will be successful but do not expect anyone to tell you that you are successful, that's reserved for a few who are necessary for society to see itself reflected in and you cannot determine how our what that will be - so, be patient and contribute to the mix - and as a friend told me recently, all you can really do is make and give the work as if it’s a donation to human growth, and in the end a donation to ‘reality’ itself."

NEXT 10. Makersplace & NFT's  2019 - 2022
Upcoming Exhibitions in 2024
- UK RWA Open Bristol September - December
- Australia, Adelaide July, A Life in Video Art, Retrospective, July
- Sedition International, Online Release, Un Tempo Una Volta, April
- Italy Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello & Palazzo Bembo, Exhibition titled Visions, Venice, March

​Between 2008 ​and 2023 Terry exhibited work in the China, USA, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Korea, Portugal, Iran, Turkey, Slovenia, Sweden, France, Norway, Malta, Madeira and the UK - some of these countries many times. A complete list of Exhibitions between 2008 and 2023 follows beneath the section on exhibitions beneath 1978 and 2007.
EXHIBITIONS Between 1978 onwards
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In 1978, the Fashion show, (made in 1977) was exhibited at the Long Beach Museum by Kathy Rae Huffman, (curator of moving image work). Next came the Fourth Tokyo Video Festival where Flaxton, Cooper and Dedman's piece (written by Flaxton) Talking Heads, won a prize. From then on Flaxton's work was shown at many festivals, notably the Worldwide Video Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, but many, many other places including Moscow, Tokyo, Algiers, San Francisco, Locarno, Montbeliard, Paris, Milan, Rome, Seoul, Amsterdam - and many other places around the world. In 1986 the British Film Institute as well as Channel 4 asked Flaxton to Shoot “Out off Order” the 3rd electronically produced and released on 35mm ‘film’ in history (after “Harlow” starring Ginger Rogers, 1965 and 200 Hotels, 1972). Though travelling as a cinematographer and occasionally exhibiting between 1992 and 1998 there was a hiatus in Flaxton's work between Zagorsk (1992 and Skin Deep (1999) Flaxton in fact worked on many artists pieces and brought a high level of lighting to many people's work.

Having come across HD in 1990, between 2000 and 2007 Flaxton concentrated on HD as a developing production form and tested cameras for Panasonic and Sony and by 1999 he had shot an HD work in the US which was mastered as a 35mm output at Du Art Labs in New York - and from then on spoke at many seminars including the NFT to speak about the transition form Standard Definition (720 x 576 pixels) to the then low level HD Standards of 1280 x 720, the faux HD of 1440 x  1920 and finally the full 1920 x 1080 standard that we all know today (2023). So in eventually entering academia in 2007 with an AHRC Creative Research Fellowship - where the candidates charge was to discover how technical and creative innovations feed upon each other, Flaxton then began a second wave of production as an artist - where, having spent many years on moving camera cranes and dollies - Flaxton chose to use HD and the camera itself as a window, a portal on, not only the world - but importantly on the very thing that looks: the self. By 2015 Sedition Art had arrived and was a perfect fit for what Flaxton later called his 'Chamber Works’. Flaxton also began producing long form moving image artworks during this period characterised by “Myth and Meaning in the Digital Age” (began in 1992 and finished in 2018) , “To Sand and Stare: A Somerset Landscape” (2011 to 2018) and latterly “Mexico: Landscape of the Heart” (2023).
With now over 1000 collectors, out of 2000 artists, I'm now the 8th most collected artist on Sedition Art. So there's a free work called In Paradiso  which can be obtained here - use code: DF12AC94. Below, all of the works I have on Sedition - click the pictures for a larger view
Picture
Latest Retrospective - Bath 2023:​ Terry Flaxton: A Life in Video Art
From 6th October through to 5th November 2023
28 Roseberry Rd, Bath BA2 3DX
Below Talking Heads 1978/79