Still Life with Monitor

"Still Life with Monitor" (1984)

Still Life with Monitor (1984) was made during a period when I was interested in revisiting earlier themes related to my experience and perceptions of broadcast television. My relationship was not straightforward, as not only did I enjoy watching, but I was actively working in it too, as at the time, I was a freelance animator for BBC TV.

Made immediately after Interlude (Homage to Bugs Bunny), Sill Life with Monitor was at least partly about watching TV (and being an active consumer!) and about the relationship between TV adverts and the way in which the advertising of the day drew on the visual arts not only for inspiration, but also to provide products with a certain air of sophistication. For some reason I also felt it was necessary or desirable to make a statement or perhaps a declaration of my own about my chosen medium. (Video was still very much on the outside at the time). I wanted claim the video image for “art”, and hence the somewhat aggressive and repetitive soundtrack- a re-appropriation of a sound bite from the soundtrack of Powell and Pressburger’s 1941 film The 49^th Parallel: “That’s for Picasso, that’s for Matisse, and…that’s for me!!”