about After Channel 4 bought Health Emergency they rang us and said do you know Video Art? We did, so we said yes (I'd been a member of LVA then LEA then Lux with Tony Cooper and Penny Dedman since 1977). In fact by now Videomakers had become a place where Video Artists could come and do studio shoots or editing (for instance George Barber and George Snow) plus we'd engaged the UK's first Actt/Bectu amerawomen by then.
Ch 4 told us they'd commissioned someone else but it hadnt worked out - so we set about serving up a context based production around the history and production of Video Art in the UK which also served to show the contemporary scene which we'd been so much a part of. Then we heard that another Department had commissioned Ghosts in the Machine and the race was on. But in fact as ourae was contecxt based with interviews with artists and curators and interested parties (and three of the programmes had interviews with Europeans) naturally Ghosts which in the first instance was a compilation of already made pieces by American Artists got to screen first. During the making of parts 3 - 5 I was contacted by John Wyver to make a piece which eventually won awards at Locarno and Montbeliard and was shown on CH4, PBS, RTE and French TV - called The World Within Us. So we kept up a heady mix of shooting many music acts for Universal establishing a documentary company that Renny Bartless joined with a commission called the Cold Ward Game (he directed the USA and I directed the USSR - collaborating wioth Noam Chomsky and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian) and then I shot for Birmingham FIlm and Video Workshop the BFI and Channel 4's video captured Drama Out of Order. This was only the thrid electronicaqlly captured feature to be released on film after 1966's Mae West starring Ginger Rodgers (Electronoivison a mod of Secam at 819 lines) 200 Motels captured on PAL 625 2 inch and OOOrder was captured on an analogue to digital chip based system on betacam. This premiered in Los Angeles (and mirrored my 1999 Panasonic based 35mm output for Du Art Labs in New York which paved the way for early video to film outputs). Throughout the 80's to around 93 I was integrating film and video cinematography and trying to prove that Digital could be as good as film, working with high level docs on big subjects which I either wrote, shot or edited or all three or parts thereof - and also working with video art aesthertics which become on one side The World Within Us and The Colour Trilogy (the latter premiered at the Bonne Biennale in 1992) and on the other the Building Sights Strand - take a look at The Boots Wets Building with Iwoona Blaszwick and the Lloyds Building with Michael Craig Martin to see what I mean (both on BBC iPlayer right now). Many of the projects we made generally got pick of the day in the broadsheets as well as the red banners - and we had premiers at the South Back centre and the Tate. Finally the company went down when we were making a project with Animal Rights activists which Channel 4 had put us together with. That was brutal and taught me that you don't mess with the Beast. A final note on all of this - in some books from the time I am credited with the above, in others I am not but the work is valued because it's been attributed to others (believe it or not). In one book, I was called in "a sometimes psychedelic artist' and this was when I was writing drafts for the Cold War Game the Soviet Union with Penny Dedman and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian - I've yet to see Noam Chomsky called psychedelic but somehow people who write the histories need to pull down others and I find my own history traduced - which is a shame really. |
Triple Vision & Channel 4
1985 - 1992 1: Vida 1976 - 1981
2: Transition 1981 - 1982 3: Triple Vision/Videomakers 1982 - 1985 4: Triple Vision & Channel 4 1985 - 1992 5: Cinematography & Scripts 1992 - 2006 6: Academia 2007 - 2016 7: Sedition 2015 - 2023 8: 2024 and Beyond? 2024... Works Created in this period
1983/1984 Health Emergency 1984/1985 On Video 1 1984/1985 On Video 2 1984/1985 On Video 3 1986/1987 On Video 4 1986/1987 On Video 5 Out of Order 1986 (Flaxton Cinematographer (BFI Channel 4) The Cold War Game The USA 1986 - 1987 The Cold War Game The USSR 1986 - 1987 The State of Europe 1987 The Lift 1988 Rites (female Genital Mutilation) 1990 (Dir Dedman, Editor Flaxton) 1989 I am an Ox I am a Tractor I am a Man I am a Woman (Dir Sally Potter, Flaxton Cinematographer/Editor) 1989 The World Within Us Channel 4 1988 In the Belly of the Beast ITV 1989 Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Byker Wall with Beatrix Campbell (1989) Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Boots Wets Building with Iwona Blaswick, (1990) Building Sights 1 BBC 2 The Lloyds Building with Michael Craig-Martin (1990) The Inevitability of Colour Channel 4 1989 - 1990 Bonne Biennale Premier The Colour Tryptich 1992 The Inevitability of Colour 1989 Echo's Revenge 1991 The Object of Desire 1991 Intensive Care 1 1990 Intensive Care 2 1991 Animal Rights/Animal Wrongs 1992 Hi8US 1 Wingnut and the Sprog (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 89 Hi8US 2 (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 90 Hi8US 3 (Flaxton Cinematographer Dir Turpie) 91 Relative Stranger BBC2 (Director Endaff Emlyn, Cinematographer Flaxton) 92 White Goods for the Bonne Biennale - The Dnner Party 1993 14 History Lessons The Colour Myths 1989 - 1999 |
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 |
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. |