LUX / Blog
Editorial
7 Sep 2009
Image: Tamara Krikorian, Unassembled Information (1977), still.
David Hall on Tamara Krikorian and Tony Sinden
Tamara Krikorian and Tony Sinden died in July, both in their mid-sixties. They were two of the first few British artists to work with film and video in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Americans inevitably gained more attention at this time due to early institutional support unlike Britain where private galleries and major institutions such as the Tate showed little interest. However, with the advent of large scale projection – most clearly exemplified when the Viola spectacle seduced the establishment – and the subsequent yBa explosion hit the headlines in the 1990s, moving image was finally ‘discovered’ and lauded as an acceptable art form. But more than twenty years earlier Krikorian and Sinden were pioneers of the fledgling practice, often engaged with emerging artist collectives such as London Video Arts (of which Krikorian was a co-founder) and the London Film-makers Coop.
I met both artists at the turn of the 70s and worked with Sinden on a number of projects. He helped produce my TV Interruptions for Scottish TV in 1971, then, whilst jointly making a series of experimental films, we collaborated in staging the country’s first multi-channel video installation at Gallery House in 1972. A later version, 101 TV Sets, was exhibited at the Serpentine’s seminal 1975 international 'Video Show'. It was here that Krikorian, one of the UK’s first female video artists, showed her earliest installation Breeze. A year later she was included in an unprecedented one-off Tate video installations exhibition staged by the progressive education department, and in 1977 represented Britain at the Paris Biennale. She also co-curated some important early shows including 'Video: Towards Defining an Aesthetic at the Third Eye Centre', Glasgow in 1976. She followed this by initiating a number of video conferences and related events. Later, in 1984, she became director of the Welsh Sculpture Trust eventually extending its role of siting sculpture to that of promoting a wider variety of public art. She re-named it Artworks Wales.
Sinden’s practice spanned four decades of prolific production. He worked with single screen and ‘expanded’ film, video, installation, slide and site related projects, the latter often involving an artist group titled Housewatch. Among the many shows he appeared in, here and internationally, was Whitechapel’s 'Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain 1965-75' in 2000, and he recently took part in Tate Modern’s 'Expanded Cinema' conference as did Krikorian showing her installation Time Revealing Truth, 1982-83. Throughout the 1970s both taught on the Time Based Media course I headed at Maidstone College of Art (now UCA). These dynamic artists and close friends will be greatly missed.
For interviews and further information visit the Rewind archive database.
Tamara Krikorian 1944-2009
Tony Sinden 1943-2009
David Hall studied architecture, art and design at Leicester College of Art (1954-60) and sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1960-1964). He was awarded first prize for sculpture at the Biennale de Paris (1965) and took part in the first major exhibition of Minimalist art, Primary Structures, New York (1966) before turning to photography, film and video. His first television interventions appeared on Scottish TV in 1971 and his first video installation was shown in London in 1972. His single screen and installation work with film and video has been widely screened and exhibited both in the UK and internationally. More information on David Hall is available at the artist's site. To see clips of his work and more features, visit David Hall's page on Luxonline.
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