'Godfather of British Video Art' gets London retrospective

Associated media

David Hall | ‘Situations Envisaged’

17 July – 14 August 2015

Richard Saltoun Gallery will be showing the work of one of the earliest exponents of video art in the UK, David Hall. Richard Saltoun will be showing Hall’s sculpture, film and video. Curated by Stephen Partridge, the exhibition features major works from the artist’s estate.

David Hall, who has been called the ‘Godfather of British video art’, was an innovative artist and filmmaker who took a new and very individual approach to the promotion and reception of video art in the UK. 

This exhibition takes as its nexus the ground-breaking installation, A Situation Envisaged: The Rite II (Cultural Eclipse) (1989–90): a 15-monitor video installation, first commissioned and exhibited for ‘Video Positive '89’ at Tate Liverpool. Screened alongside this important installation is Cinema (1972-3), a series of five films made with Tony Sinden: Actor, Between, Edge, This Surface and View, which were first exhibited at Tate in 1974. The five films explore the materiality of the screen against the projected image through a manipulation of classic tropes and film techniques.

Hall's interest in the intrinsic properties of film as a medium is further explored with two single-channel video works: TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane) (1977) – described by Michael O'Pray of the BFI as ‘an astonishing tour de force’ – and Vidicon Inscriptions: The Tape (1973), first exhibited at ‘Dokumenta 6’, 1977. These films have been described as unparalleled in their unique and experimental approach to the medium of video.

The exhibition will include archival documentation, drawings, and vintage photographs from the estate of David Hall.

Biography

David Hall (b. Leicester, 1937 - d. Kent, 2014), a student of architecture, art and design at Leicester College of Art (1954–60) and sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1960–64). He went on to teach sculpture at Kingston University, London, and later St Martins School of Art, London. He very quickly became part of the challenge to the dominant object-based culture extant during the 1960s and was a founding member and contributor to the video art movement.

Hall was co-curator of the first video-installation exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London 1976; co-founder of London Video Arts (now LUX), 1976; a member of the Artist Placement Group (formed 1966); and founder of the first time-based media course at Maidstone College of Art in 1972. Awarded first prize at the ‘Biennale de Paris’ in 1965, Hall took part in other key shows including:  ‘Primary Structures’, Jewish Museum, New York, 1966; a solo show at Tate Gallery, 1974; the seminal international ‘Video Show’ exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1975, of which he was also co-organizer, and more recently bringing to a dramatic conclusion the switch from analogue to digital broadcast transmissions with 1001 TV Sets (End Piece) (1972–2012) at the Ambika P3, London. Hall succeeded in making video art an autonomous art form and bringing to the forefront the notion of ‘time-based media’.

The new exhibition is curated by Stephen Partridge in consultation with Hall's daughter Debi Hall, Caroline Irving, Anna Ridley, and Adam Lockhart.

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