00:00:01
Meg Cranston interviewed by William Furlong. From the inlay you can infer that the interview was held at the Karsten Schubert Gallery in 1994. An appropriation of images and issues from popular culture provided both the title: Some Popular Subjects and the theme for Meg Cranston's exhibition at the Karsten Schubert Gallery, London (June/July 1994). The works on display were formally disparate and as the artist adds: 'They go from media to media based on subject matter', yet there was a sense in which the 'open ended experimentation of conceptual art' provided the exhibition with a critical underpinning. Walking around the gallery, the artist initially discusses a work entitled Free Women comprising a found image of a woman from the late 1960s onto which Cranston had attached fabric horns. She then goes on to talk about a series of ten canvases, one of which also shared the title of the exhibition using as its subject matter, Shoes, Dogs and Death. Others in the series were entitled, Middle Class Monotony, Psychedelic Experience, Red Square Digestive and What happens to a Group of Stereotypers. Cranston goes on to discuss works including The Tragic Hero of Yorba Linda, a hand coloured gelatine print depicting Richard Nixon crying at his wife's funeral. Continuing the theme of 'well known people who died recently', the artist talks about the work XL, a large photographic print pinned to the gallery wall featuring an image of rock star Kurt Cobain from People magazine. At the end of the interview Cranston elaborates on the influence of conceptual art on her practice and the importance of her former tutor, John Baldessari.
00:18:30
David Cunningham interviewed by William Furlong and Micahel Archer. From the inlay you can infer that the interview was held in 1994, on the occasion of the display of Cunningham's installation The Listening Room at Chisenhale Gallery, London.
In the autumn of 1994, David Cunningham recorded the space of the Chisenhale Gallery, London. The signal from a wall-mounted microphone was fed to a pair of loud-speakers, also in the space. The feedback which inevitably occurred was controlled by a sound gate within the circuit. In an adjacent room, Cunningham here discusses the genesis of The Listening Room, at the Chisenhale Gallery and its relationship to our ideas of sculpture and installation as well as of music. John Cage's name crops up in the conversation, not as a direct influence but as someone against whose example this installation might usefully be seen. Its place in his activities as a whole is considered as Cunningham draws out connections to his forays into the field of pop and to his role as Michael Nyman's producer.
00:34:09
Stan Douglas interviewed by William Furlong. Interview held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, where three installations by Stan Douglas were displayed.
Stan Douglas's exhibition at the ICA London (September 1994) included three installations: Evening focuses on the shift from 'straight' news to 'Happy Talk' news broadcasting an American TV in the late Sixties; Hors Champs explores the political, racial and expressive significance of free jazz improvisation; and Pursuit, Fear, Catastrophe: Ruskin B.C. develops an enigmatic tale around a former logging community in British Columbia. In addition a number of Monodramas and other short pieces for TV were shown. Douglas examines each of the large-scale pieces from the point of view both of their content and of their specific technical parameters. In each case the development of the narrative involves a continual play between the two. There are also many 'absences' which have structural importance. The conversation ends with a discussion of the works' audience and of how in each case technology and staging combine in referring to the viewing public of a particular time and place.
