OTHER INFLUENCES & BIOGRAPHIES

LIMELIGHT CLUB, Multiscreen Show

Artists: The Duvet Brothers. 20 mins, 1986 / 2008
“We toured a live multi-screen show for 3 years. We played out from three sources into as many TVs as we could get; minimum 9, maximum 25 but usually 18 or 21. They were built in an architectural shape on a scaffold structure. Multi-Screen installation on this scale had only really happened previously in the art world.

This show was performed to a packed Limelight club in London, mainly full of suited execs from the TV Commercials and Music industry that came to see what all the scratch video fuss was about. It is significant in that it demonstrated the crossover of the Duvet Brother’s style to the commercial world.

This show includes specifically made for multi-screen pieces like ‘Horses’ and ‘Strickly Trigalig’ which was a commission from London Video Arts to create a nine screen installation in their windows. The hand-held cameras and fast cut music promos, shot on Super-8 film were also just starting to have an influence. Now, of course, this style is part of the common language of contemporary television and movies.” Rik Lander and Peter Boyd MacLean, 20


ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES

George Barber, declared the ‘Henry Ford of independent video’, studied conceptual sculpture at St Martin's School of Art and The Slade School of Fine Art. His video release entitled 'THE GREATEST HITS OF SCRATCH VIDEO' became internationally known in the late 80's and was featured on television right across the world and similarly in many magazines, including The Face, The Independent and Sunday Times. Barber has also had work shown in a variety of high profile venues such as The Tate Britain, ICA, the Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, The World Wide Video Festival, Holland, The Kitchen, New York and Pompidou Centre, Paris.

The Duvet Brothers are Peter Boyd MacLean and Rik Lander. Lander and MacLean met at The Colchester Film Workshop and began collaborating in 1983.Thier most well known work is ‘Blue Monday’ 1984. The piece was screened on Channel 4 in 1985 and featured on George Barber’s compilation ‘The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video Volume 1’.Both Rik Lander and Peter Boyd MacLean currently work as directors. Lander has worked for Channel 4, covering events such as the Turner Prize and Boyd MacLean has directed animation pieces including ‘Crapston Villas’ and ‘Greaseland’.

John Scarlett-Davis was born in 1950. He studied Geology at University of Swansea, and then at Goldsmiths College of Art, London. He worked as an editor and assistant director for Derek Jarman, including Jarman's first music video, and was a prolific tape maker in the early 80s, importing the tempo of Scratch video into his art pieces. Following a successful career in music videos and commercials, he now lives in Cornwall, exhibits photographs, and is writing a novel.

John Maybury was born in 1958. He studied at North East London Polytechnic, and designed sets for Derek Jarman's Jubilee, and worked with him on The Last of England and The Tempest. Initially associated with Super8 filmmaking, his mastery of video technology was quickly evident in a series of music videos and long-works for television such as Remembrance of Things Fast 1993. Following the success of his fictionalised life of Francis Bacon Love is The Devil 1998; he is now working on feature films.
Gorilla Tapes was founded in Luton by artists Jon Dovey, Gavin Hodge and Tim Morrison. They made an immediate impact with their sharp political tapes, collaged from old film footage and the TV news imagery of the mid-Thatcher years. Gorilla Tapes have exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Highlights include participation in Tate Britains ‘A Century of Artists Films’ in 2003.They are currently working separately in academia and documentary filmmaking.

Born in Essex, England in 1952, Chris Meigh-Andrews then lived in Montreal, Canada. Working with video in a fine art context since 1977, his single channel video tapes have been screened in the UK, Europe, North & South America, Australia and Japan. Establishing an artist's post-production facility and independent video production company, he worked as a freelance director and cameraman, video editor, and animator to fund his own experimental video work throughout the 1980's. An active member of London Video Arts, he was chairman of the Council of Management from 87-89.

Nick Cope has worked in film and video production collaborating with Cabaret Voltaire, the Butthole Surfers, O Yuki Conjugate and Electribe 101 amongst others. His practice is informed by the canon of experimental and avant-garde film and video practice from early last century to the present. He currently works as Senior Lecturer in Video and New Media Production at the University of Sunderland.

Holger Hiller is a musician who studied art in Hamburg, where he met Walter Thielsch and Thomas Fehlmann and recorded his first works with them. With Fehlmann he later founded the band Palais Schaumburg in 1980. At the same time his solo career began. Hiller was one of the first musicians in Europe to use the sampler as his main or sole instrument. From 1984 on he lived in London, eventually working as producer for Mute Records. In 1988 he recorded "Ohi Ho Bang Bang" with Akiko Hada, a Japanese experimental video artist and photographer based in Berlin, Germany.

Sandra Goldbacher and Kim Flitcroft began showing their re-cut versions of television commercials and Hollywood films on old TV sets at the Fridge Club in Brixton in 1984. Flitcroft went on to make mainly documentaries, among the most recent of which is ‘Cutting Edge: Girls Αlone and Boys Alone’ and ‘Guyana, Trouble in Paradise’, a short series about the role of a third-world government. Goldbacher directed many major commercials for Absolute Vodka, The Observer, Philips, Evian, Wella, Johnny Walker and Baileys. She also directed various arts documentaries for the BBC series 'Building Sights' and two documentaries on the world of boxing for Channel Four. She wrote and directed her first feature film The Governess in 1998. For that film she was nominated for a BAFTA for best newcomer and won a Hitchcock Award at the Dinard British Film Festival.

Jeffrey Hinton has been cited as being largely responsible for the ‘trash’ aesthetic attached to the infamous Taboo nightclub in London. An associate of Taboo founder, Leigh Bowery, Hinton used cut-ups of Blondie videos, gay pornography and Bollywood films, which were projected onto the dance floor. Hinton went on to have a successful career as a DJ, although little is known about his career as a video artist after the 1980s.