Since 1966, Modern Art Oxford has hosted avant-garde artists, performances and art forms. In this third post in our #MAOarchive series we look back to a pioneering show in 1990.
At a time when video art remained marginalised in the art world, Signs of the Times was the first major exhibition of British sculpture and installation in video, slide-tape and film from the 1980s.
Referring to then head curator Chrissie Iles, one critic wrote: “The Museum of Modern Art Oxford must be the only public space to have on its staff a specialist in video and alternative media… I’m not a lover of video – rarely does an artist overcome the clutter of technology – but this selection is exemplary.” Scroll to see just a few from this exemplary selection.
Tina Keane’s Escalator featured a double ‘staircase’ of video monitors. Frames of people sleeping rough in the London Underground, ‘the city of broken spirits’, were split with shots of the wealthy City.
Judith Goddard’s Electron – Television Circle was originally sited on Dartmoor and was created in response to the landscape. Seven television monitors and a video recorder were arranged in a circle, open to the elements. To recreate the installation in the gallery, slides were used to reinvent the surrounding landscape.
Holly Warburton’s Viridus took the form of a triptych combining sculpture and dissolve slide-tape. Taking inspiration from Greek mythology, she reconciled contrasting symbols to explore universal themes of life, death, and resurrection.
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