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Terry Flaxton Terry Flaxton (born 1953) is a Professor of Cinematography and the Lens Based Arts, Director of the Centre for Moving Image Research and an academic researcher at University of the west of England. Flaxton is an English video artist who’s career as a cinematographer, academic and researcher, contributed to the establishment of video as an art form in the United Kingdom.[2][3] Flaxton was present shooting for Apple during the making of Ridley Scott’s famous 1984 commercial, which then became the basis for his seminal work ‘Prisoners’. He is also Director of the Bristol International Video Festival.

Contents

Life and Work

References

External Links

Life and work

Terry Flaxton attended Wimbledon College of Art and the University of East London. He was one of the second wave of UK video artists1 and prompted a set of initiatives in exhibition and also began to re-define the trajectory of video art away from the structuralist tendencies of UK moving image towards a more ‘transcendent’ form of work2.

In 1976 he Penny Dedman and Anthony Cooper formed ‘Vida’3. In 1978 he joined London Video Arts founded by Stephen Partridge, David Critchley, Stuart Marshall, David Hall, Tamara Krikorian and others. This acted as a promotional agency, an artist-led workshop and a distribution service. Flaxton and fellow artist Chris Meigh-Andrews put on a series of early shows in London in 1979 and 1980 at the AIR Gallery London and ACME Gallery London, swapping tapes with people like the Bay Area Video Coalition which represented artists such as Bill Viola. LVA also swapped tapes with Electronic Arts Intermix New York and the Chicago Video Data Bank. This activity then led to Flaxton started the First National Independent Video Festival at the London Filmmakers Co-op in 19814 (with others including early founders of LVA). Flaxton started Triple Vision in 1981 with Penny Dedman, then Kez Cary who was replaced by Rene Bartlett. Flaxton continued with his exhibitions trajectory and subsequent iterations of the festival occurred at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. LVA Later became LUX with Flaxton acting for some years as a governor in the 90’s as it transitioned to LUX.

Flaxton took on the problem early in his career: ‘how to understand electronic media in the light of the craft of a medieval painter’ – that is if one had to know how to mix pigments with oil, what was the corollary of that in electronic media? Given that the best training in moving images at that time was to be had within the film and television industry Flaxton became a cinematographer and in 1981 shot for MTV whilst they were solely a US operation. Flaxton shot first for Japanese then American Companies and was present shooting for Apple on Ridley Scott’s famous ‘1984’ commercial which launched the Macintosh computer. Flaxton derived footage from this for one of his most important works ‘Prisoners’ 5, 6.

At this time Channel 4 began and Flaxton formed the group TripleVision which sold some original work for transmission in their independent strand and by 1990 had produced many programmes for them including a 2 part investigation of UK Video Art, 3 part investigation of European Video Art7, was commissioned several times by Channel for potent projects The World Within Us8,9 for like Ghosts in the Machine, and also worked with people like Johnathan Steele of the Guardian and Noam Chomsky on projects as diverse as A history of US and Soviet foreign  policy, Women’s Circumcision, A history of the UK Health service as well as others.

This concentration on producing both information and entertainment also carried forward in Flaxton’s work with the investigation of what it meant to mediate images, places, sounds, ideas and so on. In continuing in the industry Flaxton maintained making art from the work he shot as a self-reflective and conscious cinematographer, director, producer, writer and editor and this in turn impacted on his artwork such that the line between art, entertainment, information and the process of being exposed to the medium together became the thrust of his later investigations. This in turn propelled the creation of many new projects (funded by institutions like Channel 4 and shown on Alive from Off Centre on PBS in America and ‘Avance Sur Image’ on Canal Plus in France)10 which themselves became the text for a restless investigation into the moving image in all of its aspects, political, cultural aesthetic, technical and physiological.

On joining Academia in 2007 Flaxton was awarded the prestigious Creative Research Fellowship by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council where he experimented further with the expanding parameters of the Moving Image concentrating initially on high resolutions and out of which came the signature work: In Re Ansel Adams11.

He is Director of the Centre for Moving Image Research and an academic researcher at University of the west of England and his major research projects include an investigation of the effects of higher resolutions on the Eye/Brain System. He is also Director of the Bristol International Video Festival which began in 2015.

His most recent work was funded by the Vice Chancellors of both the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England and this bcame a triptych of moving images called ‘The Intersection of Dreams’ and restaged Dali’s painting of the Crucifixion of St John. This was premiered at both Bristol Cathedral and the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York in 2015 and ran for 6 months and exhibited to over 650,000 people (St John’s figures). It returned to St Johns for a similar run in October 2016.

References

1            VIDEO ART: the early years

http://ukvideoart.tripod.com/

2        A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, Ed Curtis (1997)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directory-British-Video-Artists-Council/dp/1860200036

3        A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, Ed Curtis (1997) Page 212

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directory-British-Video-Artists-Council/dp/1860200036

4        Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art edited by Julia Knight (University of Luton/Arts Council England, 1996) Page 359

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diverse-Practices-Critical-British-Council/dp/1860205003

5        Picture This: Media Representations of Visual Art and Artists ed Hayward (1988) London Page 71

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Picture-This-Representations-Artists-Council/dp/1860205186

6            Rewind, British Artists Video in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, Cubitt, Partridge, John Libbey (2012) Pages 15, 131, 174, 175, 176

http://www.johnlibbey.com/books_detail.php?area=med&ID=155

7            "A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004" David Curtis, (BFI Publishing 2006) Page 78

https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/a-history-of-artists'-film-and-video-in-britain-david-curtis/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781844570966

8            A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, Ed Curtis (1997) Page 212

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directory-British-Video-Artists-Council/dp/1860200036

9            Timeshift Cubitt (1991) Page 145

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Timeshift-Culture-Comedia-Sean-Cubitt/dp/0415016789

10          Video Art – A Guided Tour, Catherine Elwes (I.B. Tauris, 2005)

http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/The%20arts/Art%20forms/Non-graphic%20art%20forms/Electronic%20holographic%20%20video%20art/Video%20Art%20A%20Guided%20Tour.aspx?menuitem=%7B4135E941-7EC1-4A30-AC9A-1AA0B51A8009%7D

11          A History of Video Art, Chris Meigh-Andrews, Bloomsbury, (2013) Pages 324, 325

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-history-of-video-art-9781845202194/

External links

·      Official web site - http://www.visualfields.co.uk/flaxtonpage1.htm

·      Rewind Interview with Terry Flaxton - http://www.rewind.ac.uk/rewind/index.php/Database

·      Terry Flaxton’s work at LUX - http://lux.org.uk/collection/artists/terry-flaxton

·      Papers http://bristol.academia.edu/TerryFlaxton/Papers