Page 82 - Studio International - July August 1975

he was at pains to articulate his respect
for the truth of an existing material
situation. Even though its fundamental
purpose was obstructive, the 1966
installation sculpture had contained the
germ of this idea in so far as it did
represent a response to a specific space:
after all, the reduction of the room's
volume took its cue from the actual
volume at his disposal. And the
Camden exhibition had likewise
contained, in a multi-layered way, both
a 'painting' and a 'sculpture' related to
the room in which the framed
photographs and newspapers were
displayed. But neither of these
precedents manifested so directly
Hilliard's search for a discreet
integration with existing surroundings as
did another experiment executed within
a gallery context. One narrow section of
floor was taken out of the Lisson
Warehouse's street-level room, an
extreme step but one which
nevertheless honoured the integral
structure of the building rather than
flouting it. Viewed from the room
itself, the gap is fully in accordance with
the floorboard pattern; and seen from the
basement gallery beneath, the section
runs securely between two ceiling joists.
The existing architecture is therefore
not threatened at all, leaving our
attention free to concentrate on the
extraordinary pair of coloured slits
(intense blue from above, yellow from
below) which can be seen in Hilliard's
photographic records of the piece. In
actual fact, it is the conjunction of the
two views reproduced here which caused
these startling colour variations :
examined singly at the Lisson, the rooms
registered two different kinds of 'normal'
white light, tungsten spotlight and Photoscuipture, 1968
daylight fluorescent — in other words, a Installation, Camden Arts Centre, 1969
work which was discreet to the point
of invisibility. Hilliard still considers the
original work to be a sculpture rather
than anything else,6 and it is true that
both the Lisson project and related
experiments with thin lines of photo-
luminescent tape running round the
ceiling of a darkened room at Hilliard's
family house are comparable with the
environmental minimalism of artists like
Larry Bell or Michael Asher. But these
`peripheral illumination' pieces were a
fundamentally private activity, once
more documented through photographic
means, and Hilliard finally found it
impossible to ignore the logical
invitation which came from accepting the
central status of pictures supposedly
intended as information sources alone.
Writing here in retrospect, it would
be simple to assert that his decision to
dispense with purely sculptural
propositions and turn instead to the
resources of the camera itself solved
Hilliard's dilemma, transferring his
general involvement with truth to
materials from inaccessible locations
to the actual instrument with which he
was working. The resulting tight
interface between means and ends —
the photograph and its various ways of
dealing with visual data — could well
seem to constitute a satisfying synthesis
of Hilliard's principal preoccupations.
But an artist's evolution is never as neat
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