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RESURRECTION
(2005/06) Digital Discourse is a tight exhibition in which every work seems to be a consequence of the previous one. It also successfully pauses a medium which is continuously playing yet simultaneously gives it more space in which to expand. Stanley Borg “An Exhibition that Mega Bites”, The Times (Malta) Dec. 31st, 2005. WAWEL CASTLE FROM DEBNICKI BRIDGE (2004) “Photography
has returned to the role of tool as part of the creative process,
lacking its own artistic value. We can observe this shift, in Krakow’s
Bunkier Sztuki, with the newest project of British artist Chris
Meigh-Andrews. His work entitled “View of the Wawel Castle
from Debnicki Bridge (after Ignacy Krieger)” is a free variation
on Kreigers’ late 19th century work that captured this symbol
of Polish history. Meigh-Andrews is interested in discovering Kreiger’s
perception of Krakow and in what context the buildings had existed
for him. In this way, the main concern of this British artist for
many years has been the connection between past and present, questions
of memory and, as pointed out by the artist himself, the problem
of constructing places by individuals during the process of taking
pictures. In his installation photography ceases to have a purpose
of its own. The numerous photographs of the Kings’ residence
are elements of a larger entity. Thanks to digital editing, video,
and the adding of real, recorded sounds from the bridge, the photographs
used for this installation are both still and moving. The viewer
relates to the sequence of digitally recorded images permeating
each other, appearing to emerge and collapse.” FOR WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT (THE PENCIL OF NATURE) (2002) “Meigh-Andrews, for his piece For William Henry Fox Talbot, positioned the technology at the forefront of the work. Meigh-Andrews set out to digitally replicate the historic photographic image by Fox Talbot of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey. While the original photograph encapsulates the wonder of capturing an image onto photo-sensitive paper, Meigh-Andrews in his reconstruction, approaches new technology with the same degree of wonder. A temporary broadband connection to the V&A was installed to transmit the image from Lacock. The image was projected into the gallery onto frosted Perspex, the image of a window onto its material. The projection faded according to the light at Lacock, intense at mid day, fading out towards evening. New technology in this instance appeared frail, the shimmering image suspended in the gallery, still dependent on the same power of light as the original photograph. But while the original photograph was the work of one man, the digital image was the result of countless men and systems working together, a reminder of the interconnectivity of new technology.” Professor Paul Coldwell, Digital Responses: Integrating the Computer , “Pixel Raiders”, March 2003 The paradoxical interconnection between proximity and distance, of a kind that I hope to have evoked through my introductory anecdote, was rendered palpable to me through the medium of exhibition. In particular, this experience came about through an encounter with a museological installation dedicated to one of the founders of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The focal point of this arrangement of sundry artefacts associated with early photographic technology was an original copy of William Henry Fox Talbot’s book, The Pencil of Nature. There, adjacent to this otherwise standard cabinet-encased display, I came unexpectedly upon a digital projection of an oriel window of the kind immortalised by Fox-Talbot in his earliest photographs dating back to August 1835. At first, this fleeting projection could just as easily be dismissed as a case of the morning light outside being cast through the windows lining the length of this narrow gallery. Upon closer inspection, however, the shadow play seemed uncannily to re-enact the exact characteristics of this famous photographic image. To refer to this digital image as a representation seems a somewhat inadequate description in that the image gently playing on the wall surface I was facing involved the direct transmission of the light passing at that very moment, not through the windows in the very room in which I was standing, but through the actual windows of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, near Bath in the west of England. Titled, For William Henry Fox Talbot (The Pencil of Nature), the work was an exact re-composition of Fox Talbot’s famous ‘photogenic drawing’, here captured by a solar-powered digital camera and relayed ‘live’ via an ISDN phone line to the gallery in South Kensington, where it was presented at actual size in ‘real time’. This most succinct and deceptively inconspicuous work was produced by British artist Chris Meigh-Andrews as part of a series of site-specific installations commissioned by the V&A between May 2002 and March 2003. Besides connecting two geographically separate sites, the work staged through its uninterrupted image-flow - the connection that history maintains with the present, and reconnected photography to its origin as (sun) light (evoking Joseph Nicephore Niepce’s earlier assignment of the term, heliography). “Distributed Aesthetics and the Tele-image”, Vince Dziekan , Monash University, Australia, Faculty of Art & Design, Multimedia & Digital Arts A PHOTOGRAPHIC TRUTH (2001) "(BB Turner's) reflected church has survived to become the subject of an ingenious video installation by the artist Chris Meigh-Andrews.... Jane Shilling, The Times, April 3rd, 2001. "Taking Turner's image of Hawkhurst Church in Kent as a starting point, artist Chris Meigh-Andrews has created a four minute video ....to complement the pioneering photographic work that surrounds it in the gallery. The moving digital photograph begins with Turner's rather eerie shot of the dark imposing church and then gradually morphs into a video image of the church today. " "Case Study: A Photographic Truth 2001", Hot Dots: The Digital Design Magazine, November 2001. MERGING/EMERGING (1999) "For (Chris Meigh-Andrews) the defining quality of these images made them a powerful trigger for memory and imagination. The effective use of digital technology went further in evoking the renewed presence of the spa, creating a continuous flow of 'liquid' images which described the waters both in content and shimmering appearance." Helen Putler, Soundings, AN Magazine, July 1999.
Caroline Smith, from Placeholder, http//www.da2org.uk/submerged. MOTHLIGHT (1998) "In
his research, (Meigh-Andrews) grew increasingly interested in natural
images transfigured through a series of manipulations which create
an artificial, alchemical world. The installations of the 90s focus,
lastly, on a fundamental topic - the physic flux and its parallelism
with the mental flux, and the possibility that one activates the
other. Chiara Leoni, Flash Art (Italy) , Summer 1998 (trans. from Italian by Cinzia Cremona) MIND'S EYE (1997) Mind's Eye adds a new dimension to Chris Meigh-Andrews' 'post-minimal' video and installation-sculpture, although many of its themes expand on earlier concerns- words set against image, the mixture of pre-recorded and live video and an abiding concern for 'parallel flow' or continuum from the work of art to the spectator. His work relies on personal, often lyrical, ideas which have a decidedly social interface (as with visual perception). This work, I think, is his first to exploit 'hidden' aspects of vision in the sphere of scientific knowledge, in contrast to the more familiar and given world of landscape and dailyness, or to such works as The Stream in which flowing water also refers analogically to the movement of human awareness. A.L.
Rees, Catalogue essay for the exhibition, Hotbath Gallery, July-Aug,
1997. "Chris Meigh-Andrews has created a video installation that utilises the latest functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fRMI) brain scan techniques to present an electronic exposition of human perception. Mapping images of the artist's brain in response to a visual stimulus, Mind's Eye seeks to from a bridge between two views of human perception: the scientific, image-based representation and the more subjective, emotional response to art. Analysing how humans derive meaning from art has long been a preoccupation of Meigh-Andrews, and Mind's Eye is the natural successor to a number of impressive installations- including Vortex (1995) and Eau d'artifice (1990) that variously explore human consciousness." Contemporary Visual Arts, July 1997 VORTEX (1995) "Like others of Chris Meigh-Andrews' installations,....Vortex is made of electricity, the flow of those primordial forces, that even now, we scarcely comprehend, but whose movement approximates to the motions of both water and thought. The flux of electrons and magnetism, the fall of light and the drag of gravity, are the subject and the medium in an art where the two are indistinguishable. “ Sean Cubitt, essay for the exhibition at Prema Arts Centre, Oct-Nov ,1995. “... on closer scrutiny the subtlety of the piece reveals itself. Symmetries are underpinned. Sound plays backwards and forwards, water ebbs as well as flows, silence is equated with stillness. Text operates as a bridge of visual material, not literary descriptor, linking ideas and process in a parallel relationship to that of the image and the represented.” John Forster, Live Art Magazine, April-June 1996. DOMESTIC LANDSCAPES (1994) In Domestic Landscapes the artist presents fragments of landscapes, domestic settings and those semi-natural spaces which link the locations that he has at different times called “home”. People appear and disappear, relationships are hinted at but never defined. The work speaks of an elusive masculinity which is forever shifting, evolving an image of itself in the places and through the people who become significant for a time. Since this work exists as an interactive CD -ROM, the sense of mobility, of multiple permutations and connections is pervasive. At no point can one create monuments, nor devise grand narratives, theories or ideologies, there are no closures. The identity which is proposed looks no further than its own humanity to establish a working definition of what it might mean to be a man.” Catherine Elwes, from: “The Pursuit of the Personal in British Video Art’, Diverse Practices. A Critical Reader on British Video Art, ed. Julia Knight, John Libby Media, Luton.1996. A SENSE OF MYSELF (1994) "Artists
have only recently begun to exploit the computer as a medium of
expression and exploration. The work of Chris Meigh-Andrews is certainly
in the forefront of such developments. He exploits his theme of
self-imaging as a form of information , utilising a visuality that
is neither photograph nor video. Ian Harrow, Introductory Essay for CD- ROM "A Sense of Myself", 1994. PERPETUAL MOTION (1994) Perpetual Motion uses space in an intelligent way- using the dimensions of the gallery to create a sculptural installation which poses a series of relationships between the viewer, the physical presence of the objects and the technologies at work in the piece. There is a flow of the viewer’s imagination as s/he makes associative leaps between the wind machine driving the turbine and the image of the kite on the monitor. Meigh-Andrews has left creative gaps in his work, so that the audience is left to create a simple technical narrative- how it all works- and to create a narrative of meaning within the work itself.....the effect is both medative and engaging....This is a circuit of energy, imagination and visual representation through which the artist comments on the representation of landscape, the desire of both art and science to represent and imitate the natural world, to force from its disorder, structure, to take its structures and create a more perfect replica. If there is an implied synergy / dependency / inspiration between nature and the machine- there is also an implied critique of that relationship.” Lowena Faull ,“Digital Meditation. Imagine Technology as Art”, Back/slash Catalogue, Sept-Nov. 1996. "Meigh-Andrews
is an English artist who worked with the video image during the
80s, putting forward its semiological aspects. In his research,
he grew increasingly interested in natural images transfigured through
a series of manipulations which create an artificial, alchemical
world. The installations of the 90s focus, lastly, on a fundamental
topic - the physic flux and its parallelism with the mental flux,
and the possibility that one activates the other. Chiara Leoni, Flash Art, Summer 1998 (trans. from Italian by Cinzia Cremona) CROSS-CURRENTS (1993) (In Cross-Currents) "...we see this swimmer swimming beautifully, sensuously up and down in a handsome video installation....It was a work which I felt most easy with, and which I liked very much." Emmanuel Cooper, "River Crossings", Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4, March 26th, 1993. STREAMLINE (1991) "Fascinating on two levels: perceptually we see nine short films cued in sequence, yet we read it as a continuous "stream"... At a symbolic level it seems to be about relationships, messages given, received, understood, misinterpreted...This beautiful and moving piece...shows just how much video art as sculpture has come of age." Adrien Henri, Liverpool Daily Post, August 21st, 1991. “In Streamline...the space between the monitors becomes the site of the imagination as we fill in the gaps to complete the stream. This process is emphasised by the sudden appearnce of a hand at one end which launches a small paper boat. The boat travels down the stream appearing and disappearing across the monitors in a game of conceptual "Fort/Da". The delight with which children follow the boats is a testament to Streamline's breadth of appeal. The more adult viewer can also notice a narrative content which casts the female hand as the launcher of boats and the male as the recipient of the "messages". These fragile communications make their way down the line with some difficulty but always reach their destination, their meaning undoubtedly compromised by their journey. A poignant and rather magical metaphor for the vicissitudes of human communication." "European Media Arts Festival- Video Installation in Osnabruck",Variant, Winter/Spring, 1993. "Meigh-Andrews' installation impresses your memory, and sets the tone for the exhibition. our visual and linguistic experience is more often than not on screens, and this work opens new ways of dealing with them." Wendelin Zimmer (Osnabruck, Germany) Sept. 1992 (translated) "Streamline renders far more complex commentaries on communication than the flow of TV can: excluding itself from direct address, yet it is by that far more open to dialogue than the fictive dialogue of TV's self-presentation. Here after all is an example of the artist as producer, making an addition to the repertoire of effects, opening a way for new inventions in the electronic medium. In announcing its own illusionist effects,...Streamline presents an alternative version of communications: one subject to all the vagaries and dangers of the channels that it uses, that recognises the fact that there are channels." Sean Cubitt ,Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture, MacMillan, London, 1993. EAU D'ARTIFICE (1990) "Classical and formal in its inspiration and it's symmetrical economy, Eau d'Artifice opens outwards and inwards simultaneously towards the famous Kenneth Anger film....and beyond that to a formal, nearly Kantian aesthetic which, however, is maintained in constant interplay with the intangibility of the images, and their slow fade in and slow fade out. Despite its scale, the piece breathes fragility and ephemerality. water is indeed, as on the soundtrack, its central complex metaphor." Sean Cubitt, Artscribe International, April-May, 1991.
"...what Meigh-Andrews is offering us is an aural and visual stimulus, a temporal space in which to experience our own interiority...like a real fountain it interacts with our senses setting up a flow of perception, interpretation and projection in which we are the main creative protagonists. The artifice of the title reminds us that apart from its technological base, the work is a complete fiction...Eau 'Artifice refers constantly to its own means of production- the aggregation of monitors, the cables that carry the signals, the flatness of the screens that pulls against the illusion of depth...(it) allows us to play with our perceptual processes and reflect a little on th daily stream of illusions emanating from the box which we accept as objective reality." Catherine Elwes, Performance, Spring 1992. "The use of screens to make a composite image- and the use of water a subject -reappears in Chris Meigh-Andrews 1990 work Eau d'Artifice- a fountain formed of tiered video monitors. Water has been used by video artists as a metaphor for the fluidity of the medium itself, and Meigh-Andrews has, in several works, linked this metaphor to a consideration of flow as a metaphysical or psychological process." "Video Installation in the UK" Video Positive Catalogue, October 1991. "A sense of accident is use to good effect by some artists for example Chris Meigh-Andrews, whose Eau d'Artifice (1990) shown at the Harris, makes use of the wiring and playback decks as elements of the sculpture itself, punning on the flow of current, images and imaged water." Screen, Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer 1991. AN IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE (1986) "...a recognisable domesticity is re configured out of illegible but carefully equilibrated pixels, digitised into blocks of colour. As the image clarifies, the scale of abstraction rises, as the symmetry of the frame about its vertical axis intrudes further into consciousness: is this landscape imaginary because it is symmetrical? Like mud sedimenting out of river water, the raw footage emerges as the imaging of the imaginary, of self-image and imagination." Directory of Film & Video Artists, ACE, 1996. THE STREAM (1987) " A hypnotic visualisation of a Steve Reich piece from an artist whose work continues to grow in maturity and assurance." Jeremy Welsh, Bracknell Video Festival Catalogue, 1987. "... more than a slowly evolving and engagingly simple essay on the power and beauty of nature, as subtle questions arise...The Stream seems to operate , almost subliminally, on the borderline between the "landscape" genre and softcore didacticism. Eschewing the up front, confrontational strategy of many tape makers, Meigh-Andrews manages to be all the more effective in offering questions to the viewer by integrating text into a larger framework of quietly striking images." Nik Houghton, "The Stream: Chris Meigh-Andrews", Independent Media, March 1988. THE ROOM WITH A VIEW (1982) " ... an evocative work, with consistently crisp colours, non-shaky zooms, and poignant, associative imagery redolent of both personal identity and photography itself." " Reel Reviews" Time Out, July 1983. ON BEING (1985) " In On Being Chris Meigh-Andrews weaves a gentle tapestry of memories and connections with places, objects and the image of a woman with whom he was bonded. his sense of identity is fluid, shifting. he displays the kind of negative capability normally associated with the flexible ego boundaries of women." "The Politics of the Personal in British Video Art", LVA Catalogue, Autumn 1991. "Throughout a distinguished career, Meigh-Andrews' meticulous craft and intelligence mask a slow-burning, passionate commitment to the interface of technology and intimacy." Directory of British Film & Video Artists,
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