David Hall - gallery 4

The five 'gallery' pages show a small selection of work from the last forty years. Most of the quotes are extracted from texts listed in the bibliography page.

Plan drawing and view of the video installation A Situation Envisaged: The Rite 1980
The second installation in the Situation Envisaged series and first shown at
South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, England 1980.

'Sixteen domestic TV receivers are arranged in a circle; each facing away from the viewer into the enclosed space; each playing a different TV channel from the next.. A videotape playing on a revolving monitor is glimpsed at the centre through small gaps.. each so fine that vision is restricted.. suggesting an attempt to assemble information coherently as the viewer moves from one to the next. In doing so, the continuum is broken. Expectations of narrative progression are both implied and rejected.. sometimes phasing (by coincidence) with the movements of the viewer, sometimes not. Fragments seen are of private ritual.. The work confronts issues of power and the individual; the public and the private; the viewer and the viewed...' DH, from notes for the exhibition, 1980.

Stooky Bill TV 1990
Commissioned for the Channel 4 series 19:4:90 Television Interventions
by Fields and Frames and produced by Anna Ridley

'An imaginary dialogue between the pioneer of television, John Logie Baird, and the eponymous ventriloquist's dummy used as the subject of his experimental cameras.. hypothesises the thoughts of Baird and the dummy at the moment of the first successful transmission in October 1925. To Baird's insistence that TV will enable people to see themselves more than ever before, Stooky Bill ripostes that they will be led to demand the fantastical illusion that he represents.. Given the normal relationship of ventriloquist and dummy, this dialogue has numerous ironic implications...' Mick Hartney, InT/Ventions.., Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art 1996.

'This tape is a caustic glance backwards at Baird's legacy of 'dummy television', The piece is also a resounding formal success in so far as it presents an image equivalent to the one first produced in 1925.. All the trademarks of Hall's work are present here: dry wit, seriousness and the exploration of illusion; the awareness of material conditions and of cultural forms...' Michael O'Pray, A Directory of British Film and Video Artists 1996.


		The five 'gallery' pages show a small selection of work from the last forty years. Most of the quotes are extracted from texts listed in the bibliography page. Plan drawing and view of the video installation A Situation Envisaged: The Rite 1980 The second installation in the Situation Envisaged series and first shown at South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, England 1980. 'Sixteen domestic TV receivers are arranged in a circle; each facing away from the viewer into the enclosed space; each playing a different TV channel from the next.. A videotape playing on a revolving monitor is glimpsed at the centre through small gaps.. each so fine that vision is restricted.. suggesting an attempt to assemble information coherently as the viewer moves from one to the next. In doing so, the continuum is broken. Expectations of narrative progression are both implied and rejected.. sometimes phasing (by coincidence) with the movements of the viewer, sometimes not. Fragments seen are of private ritual.. The work confronts issues of power and the individual; the public and the private; the viewer and the viewed...' DH, from notes for the exhibition, 1980. Stooky Bill TV 1990 Commissioned for the Channel 4 series 19:4:90 Television Interventions by Fields and Frames and produced by Anna Ridley 'An imaginary dialogue between the pioneer of television, John Logie Baird, and the eponymous ventriloquist's dummy used as the subject of his experimental cameras.. hypothesises the thoughts of Baird and the dummy at the moment of the first successful transmission in October 1925. To Baird's insistence that TV will enable people to see themselves more than ever before, Stooky Bill ripostes that they will be led to demand the fantastical illusion that he represents.. Given the normal relationship of ventriloquist and dummy, this dialogue has numerous ironic implications...' Mick Hartney, InT/Ventions.., Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art 1996. 'This tape is a caustic glance backwards at Baird's legacy of 'dummy television', The piece is also a resounding formal success in so far as it presents an image equivalent to the one first produced in 1925.. All the trademarks of Hall's work are present here: dry wit, seriousness and the exploration of illusion; the awareness of material conditions and of cultural forms...' Michael O'Pray, A Directory of British Film and Video Artists 1996.



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