Page 85 - Studio International - July August 1975

easily be changed from a low-key
reference to isolated travelling - a
recurrent motif of romantic land art -
into the painting of a pair of white lines
on the grass, an encounter with a girl,
a light-hearted relationship with a
balloon and a surprise attack from
behind ? Each variation, so deceptively
engineered in itself, is only confounded
by the presence of the original
starting-point placed above, which is
used as a form of pictorial conscience
within the work's overall structure. This
repeated image is analogous with
Hilliard's own determination to stress,
four times over, that even the most
seemingly authentic record of an artist's
unwitnessed actions can be doctored
and improved to suit the retrospective
demands of an art work.
The lesson of Across the Park is that
the bland photographic certificate ought
hardly to be regarded as a sufficient
conveyor of experiences beyond the
immediate jurisdiction of anyone except
the artist. But it is not simply a critical
work, censuring the work of others while
remaining inside a narrow, ingrown
debate about modes of art practice.
Across the Park is also a constructive
proposition, and suggests ways in which
the artist's photograph could indeed
have a self-contained autonomy,
embodying the depicted event rather
than just loosely referring to it. The
structure of the work prescribes a more
responsible model for ongoing
endeavours in the future, without in any
sense presuming to dictate how other Camera Recording Its Own Condition,1971
artists ought to operate themselves. already arrived at, and one of the Coll: Colin St. John Wilson, London
outcomes of Across the Park was a desire
VIII. All the same, the evolution of to avoid the degree of contrivance which composed through a nine-square grid
Hilliard's work does not depend solely this piece had necessitated. For an artist laid over his viewfinder, and the amount
on an analytical prognosis of how art as a who is not interested in the formal of theatrical artifice this entailed seems in
whole ought ideally to proceed. It qualities of the photograph per se, and retrospect somewhat alien to Hilliard's
manages, for one thing, to derive finds his greatest stimulus in its most outlook. The same element of drama
considerable momentum from a artless manifestations, the stage became even more outspoken in another
dissatisfaction with the solutions he has directions needed to arrange this group 1972 work, Through the Valley, where
of gesticulating figures runs counter to devices as emotive as a pointing gun are
Ten Runs Past a Fixed Point (3)- 11500 to the instincts manifested in the rest of his employed to change the meaning of the
I second, 1971 work. No less than twelve shots were walking figure, and in several other
Hayward Gallery installation view, 1972 taken of the entire scene, which was pieces which Hilliard has so far
Coll : Arts Council of Great Britain

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