Page 81 - Studio International - July August 1975

further realization that photographs were about the mechanics of art It could be claimed that Hilliard's use of
invariably expected to represent the communication. The additional newspaper accidentally constituted a
object they recorded. The reproduction knowledge that the piece appears here as comment on the amount of editorial
of his installation piece illustrating this a reproduction taken from a photograph manipulation which the documenting of
article, for instance, constitutes the only of one view of the work itself — as inaccessible art works encourages, thus
access which most people will ever have opposed to any other view which might foreshadowing a cornerstone of his later
to the experience offered by the work change our response very markedly' — interest in the editing process. But the
itself in situ, and to this extent Hilliard's only accentuates the importance and Camden show did not set out to supply
interest in the precise role of the relevance of Hilliard's engagement with a constructive or definitive answer to the
document must have been accelerated by the distorting influence exerted by question posed here about the
its ubiquitous use in art magazines. They secondary visual information. To what legitimacy or otherwise of medium use.
have played a central part in the extent should artists embrace the Instead, an open-ended forum was
dissemination of current developments inordinate significance attached to such established in order to force the visitor
for more than a decade now, and it is not intermediary images, and put them to confront the issues involved, just as
too rash to assert that substantial firmly in the place of the art object itself ? the original St. Martin's installation
reputations have often been founded on So far as Hilliard was concerned, the pieces had insisted that everyone who
photographic replicas of work which few relative merits of actual sculpture and its came across them was obliged to register
have actually seen in the original. removed documentation proved well their awkward and provocative existence.
III. Hilliard's awareness of this situation worth exploring in his one-man show at This side of Hilliard's outlook, the
was no doubt also sharpened by the the Camden Arts Centre in 1969, where scrutinizing, interrogative side which
contemporaneous work of Richard Long, photographs of his 1966 installations wants to promote a greater critical
who likewise studied at St. Martin's and were mounted in large white borders, consciousness among those who might
became engaged in landscape projects signed, framed and hung on the wall otherwise take the endemic vicissitudes
based on the premise that photographic like primary works of art.' Unlike the of current art practice at face value, has
evidence would stand as the only sculpture pasted over with photographs, links with another of his St. Martin's
permanent testament to his essentially therefore, these new pictures dispensed student contemporariss, Bruce McLean.
private and transient activities. Although altogether with the object's presence in It is a tribute to the unusual vitality of
Long has continued to execute favour of its photographed image. Their St. Martin's during the sixties that so
sculptural installations in galleries, format was comparable with Long's many different approaches to the general
museums and gardens as well, he has presentational methods, but the overall debate about sculpture could co-exist and
never expressed any qualms about the purpose was profoundly different: interact under one roof. McLean's
problematic status of his photopieces. where Long exhibits his photographic leanings towards comic iconoclasm are
Hilliard, by contrast, has always been views in a gallery context without any sharply at variance with Hilliard's more
obsessed by the need for an integral overt doubts about their status, Hilliard's pedagogic outlook, and yet they were
relationship between idea and medium, intention at Camden was characteristically both united by a wish to place at the
for a vehicle which corresponds in a embroiled in the elucidation of centre of their work an unsettling
watertight way to the intentions it problems concerning , status and emphasis on the need for wakeful
conveys. He therefore found himself function alike. His framed photographs scepticism rather than passive
confronted with the issues raised by were not displayed on their own as acceptance in our dealings with 'radical'
accepting the full implications of the conventional exhibits but hung against initiatives in art. But if McLean
photograph as a first-order artefact in its a backdrop of newspaper sheets, which expressed this warning in terms of
own right. also provided a uniform 'ground' for boisterous debunking, and used
The problem was dramatized in 1968, other items belonging to the painting and photography simply as the most
when Hilliard took a compact fibreglass sculpture categories. The newspapers efficient method of putting across his
sculpture he had executed two years consequently acted as a neutral means of music-hall scenarios, Hilliard preferred
before and covered it completely with suggesting that photographs be allowed to aim at embodying related warnings in
photographic representations of its a standing equal to the artist's accepted the very structure of his work.
original appearance, thereby producing a means of expression. There was no
work prophetic of his later development intention, at this stage, of drawing a IV. Another pointer towards the
in its self-referential desire to equate the clear analogy with the news photographic pieces he would soon
form of the work with its internal debate photographs' ability to represent the evolve can be found in various
reality of events, people and phenomena environmental experiments Hilliard
Spotlight Above/Daylight Fluorescent Below, otherwise unavailable to the recipient. conducted around 1969 and 1970, where
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