Monitor (installation)

Monitor, 1974-1996, – black & white video installation version. ▶︎

In 1996 two original videotape works (Monitor and Easy Piece), were re-envisaged as installations using the original apparatus to help to context the works closer to their period. This was especially resonant for Monitor, which was acquired in this form by TATE in December 2014 for its permanent collection. It was then selected for the re-hang at TATE Britain entitled BP Walk through British Art – 500 Years of British Art, TATE Britain, January 2015- December 2017 (pictured above). The TATE label stated that:

Monitor is one of the early defining works of video art in Britain, revealing the structural possibilities the medium offered to artists. For Partridge it is a pure exploration of its working process. A 1973 Sony monitor is recorded close up by a camera, the hardware becoming the subject of the video. The camera, linked to the monitor it is filming, creates in the monitor an infinite succession of repeated images of itself. The artist’s hands are seen to turn the monitor to the right through 90 degrees, challenging the physical restrictions of the monitor by becoming physically involved with repositioning it. (Gallery label, September 2016)

Exhibited at Media Circus – research show of the School of Television & Imaging, DJCAD, Dundee, 1996. The Showroom, London, 1997; Cooper Gallery, DJCAD, Dundee, March 1999; Peacock Gallery, Aberdeen 2000; Experiments in the Moving Image, Old Lumiere Cinema, London, 2004;  Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s, doggerfisher gallery, Edinburgh, 2008; British Artists’ Video in the 1970s and 1980s, Dundee Contemporary Arts, November 2012; REWIND| British Artists’ Video, Careof, DOCVA, Milan, Italy, 6 November- 20 December 2012; CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, China, 17th December 2016 – 15th January 2017; Laboratory of Presentation Techniques, Arton Foundation, Warsaw, March – April 2021; Modern Conversations, Tate St Ives, May 2021; About The Future at Palazzo GIL, Campobasso, Molise Culture Foundation. Produced and organized by Luca Basilico, 17 to 27 November 2022.

Installed in doggerfisher Gallery Edinburgh 2006

updated December 19 2022