Page 53 - Studio International - November December 1975

Department. A piece of glass mirrored except for a
rectangular area in the middle, which is left transparent,
is fixed to a window-pane of the same size. The work
negates the window —the outside view appears to float
inside between spectator and window—and negates the
spectator, whose reflection is interrupted. The passerby
is simultaneously invited to look at himself and to look
outside, the one action frustrating the other. What was
offered in that work — as in many later works — was an
'object' that was scarcely there at all, that presented
nothing of itself, a device for referring the spectator to
himself and to the world.

This search for an insubstantial, fluid, 'empty' medium
led naturally to film —the camera does operate, of course,
by means of a mirror. The first work in which film is used,
Mirror Film, originally shown in An Evening of Film at

Six Frames from Mirror Film 1971
Arts Council of Great Britain

the Lisson Gallery in 1971, occupies a curious position in
Dye's oeuvre : it stands as a hinge between the purely
mirror works and all the subsequent filmic work, and yet
it is the only straightforward, one-projector, one-screen
film Dye has made. The film opens with the image of the
artist crouching behind his camera. In terms of filmic
convention, the existence of another cameraman
filming him is implied. Since each would be facing the
other head-on, this would produce not one but two films.
In fact, as one realizes sooner or later, the artist is filming
himself, in a mirror. The image is of the producer
producing the image. Gradually, a 'hole' appears in the
centre of the image, replacing the cameraman's head and
shoulders with those of another person, seen scraping
away the silvering on the other side of the mirror. The
original image is then reasserted by that other person
moving another mirror into position behind the first. A
loop-like structure is thus created that reinforces the
original self-referential one— although the work ends at
this point, it could, theoretically, go on indefinitely. By
frustrating the spectator's illusionistic expectations, by
turning his attention back on to the process of producing
images, the work demystifies that process.
In May 1972, Dye had his first one-man show, at the
ICA, London, where, on six successive evenings, he
provided a non-stop, four-hour presentation of work. In
addition to three installation pieces, which were in
continuous operation, three films and three performance
pieces were shown. Outside the large, semi-darkened