Page 80 - Studio International - July August 1975

From Sculpture to the various conditions which define the
use of the camera in art. It could, in fact,
be claimed that he has shown an intense
concern for the fitness of a given medium
ever since he studied in the sculpture
Photography subscribing initially to the prevailing
department of St. Martin's School of Art
between 1964 and 1967. For after
sculptural thought with which
St. Martin's was at that time
John Hilliard and the Issue of Self- particularly associated, he began to
review in several different ways the
underlying rationale of his activities.
Awareness in Medium Use It is no accident that his dissatisfaction
coincided with a more general Janus-
headed situation developing at St.
Richard Cork Martin's during that period, whereby a
strong body of sculptural opinion
I. Although the photograph has been to swamp the even more vital question of committed to large-scale object-making
elevated into a central means of ends, it is hardly surprising that artists in steel, fibreglass, acrylic sheet and
communication by a great many artists who are divorced from such ingrown polyester resin was being challenged by a
over the past decade, few have shown an preoccupations should treat the growing number of students with
appropriate critical or analytical camera's resources in a perfunctory way. alternative priorities. Barry Flanagan,
awareness of the medium's intrinsic At the same time, however, the who entered the School in the same year
properties. All too often, the camera photograph is being asked more and as Hilliard and afterwards stayed on to
tends to be employed as a useful more to stand, in exhibition contexts, for teach there, reacted against the often
technological convenience rather than as a complex initiatives which deserve to be elaborate technology used in
visual recording device with its own supported by a more sympathetically constructing so-called 'New Generation'
uniquely circumscribed set of considered system of communication. sculpture by opting for a more direct,
capabilities and limitations. The Photography does entail a material manual relationship with the properties
syntactic conditions governing entity in its own right, whether the artist of his materials, refusing to dress up their
photography are largely overlooked in likes it or not, and the crisis of floppy organic softness and even, on
favour of an opportunist desire to procedural activity which conceptually occasion inscribing the Magritte-like
discover a ready-made means of relaying orientated work has brought about often disclaimer n'existe pas on objects he had
strategies no longer dependent upon the hinges on the extent to which a serious made. Hilliard's response was parallel to
painting and sculpture hegemony. responsibility is still owed to the chosen Flanagan's, in that he soon began to
In a number of cases, this attitude has vehicle of expression. The majority of art suffer from a physical abhorrence of
been adopted because of a desire to use channelled through the camera needs to the industrialized techniques he was
the photograph as nothing more than a consider very carefully whether it can employing and — more significantly —
mute certificate, of no particular merit in afford so blithely to ignore the acute became disenchanted both with the
itself but documenting a project, an sensitivity towards medium which cumbersome bulk of sculpture which
event or a conceptual proposition which characterizes the painting tradition. demanded an unreasonable amount of
cannot be represented in a more generic Indeed, the urgent possibility must be exhibition space and with the surprising
form. Such an approach is faced that an impoverishment has taken fragility of objects unusually
understandable, practical and place in this respect, and that if the susceptible to deterioration.' Over and
symptomatic of a working philosophy photograph continues to be used as the above these secondary practical
which seeks to bypass the prime sole outward manifestation of a growing criticisms, however, he also grew
importance art has traditionally attached range of artists' endeavours, then its unhappy about the disparity in object
to the unique, exhibitable object. It is innate nature — its requirements, sculpture between the streamlined, bland
perhaps inevitable in view of both premises, functions and controlling finish of its façade and the often messy
painting and sculpture's increasing factors — should accordingly receive more constituents which lay beneath. (He once
absorption in an internal debate about widespread acknowledgement. thought of X-raying such sculpture as a
process on the one hand and formal means of exposing this contradiction and
propriety on the other. As a reaction to II. Over the last few years John declaring his own concern with truth to
that kind of enclosed self-examination, Hilliard's work has provided at once a materials.)2
where the question of means can assume reflection of this dilemma and a But in terms of the sculpture he made
an importance which threatens entirely prescriptive model for comprehending around that time, his strictures remained
implicit rather than explicit. One of his
1966 room installations, which nakedly
declared its wood, rope and steel
components in a didactic attempt to
disclose all the materials involved, was
conceived as an obstacle, a serial rank of
bars suspended in a public space at St.
Martin's so that passers-by would be
forced to contend with its intrusion on
their normal ease of access from one part
of the School to another.' It was a
deliberately crude strategy, too low to
crawl under easily, too high to climb over
and already ranged in distinct opposition
to the virtuosity and panache of the
sculpture Hilliard was beginning to
reject. And the fact that its existence was
temporary, tied to a specific environment
and only communicable afterwards
through visual documentation, led to the

Untitled, 1966
Installation, St. Martin's School of Art
6o