Late Night Conversations: Stuart Marshall and Tamara Krikorian

‘Late-Night Conversations’ brings together works by pioneering artists Stuart Marshall (1949–1993) and Tamara Krikorian (1944–2009), co-curated by Conal McStravick and Holly Argent. About The exhibition looks back to the seminal exhibition and conference ‘Video: Towards Defining an Aesthetic’, held in 1976 at Third Eye Centre, Glasgow. Organised by Tamara Krikorian, it led to the founding of London Video Arts, and included Stuart Marshall’s ‘Privileged View’. The exhibition at LUX re-stages ‘Privileged View’ (1976) and Krikorian’s ‘Breeze’ (1975), presenting them for the first time in fifty years, and together for the first time. It features historic works by Marshall and Krikorian, recent archival recoveries, photo and video documentation, recorded oral histories, and shared research. Drawing on Krikorian and Marshall’s own archives, this exhibition and events series takes a queer feminist approach to re-imagining their work and treats the archive as open rather than fixed, exploring areas of kinship with media and past figures. Krikorian and Marshall were close friends, critical interlocutors and educators, teaching together at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic and Maidstone College of Art in the 1970s. Krikorian turned to video in 1973 and went on to champion artists and became an influential critic and writer, writing Art Monthly’s Performance and Video column in the early 1980s. Marshall curated the UK/Canadian Video Exchange in 1984 and confronted HIV/AIDS-era misrepresentations of gay identity, most famously in his 1984 work for Channel 4, ‘Bright Eyes’. Their influence continues to inform contemporary art practice, and reverberates with today’s questions of media, journalistic integrity and networked activism. ‘I could go to Newcastle and stay at Stuart’s house, and we’d talk half of the night about the work.’ – Interview with Tamara Krikorian, Rewind, 2005. The exhibition is anchored by two early installations by both artists. ‘Breeze’ (1975), Tamara Krikorian’s four-channel video installation, shows four static ten-minute shots of water across separate monitors. The surface tension of the water breaks as the video’s override function causes high contrast on the image; the medium itself intervening in the representation of the subject, a symbolic idea Krikorian would return to throughout her work. ‘Privileged View’ (1976), Marshall’s two-channel installation, is recreated for the first time since its original presentation, using a combination of analogue and digital video and Marshall’s original props. Its themes of surveillance and paranoia also open onto a more personal reading of Marshall’s coming out as gay in LVA’s earliest years. Alongside these two works, the exhibition includes an archive display and a programme of short videos by both artists, sharing aspects of their broader practices and the synergies and frictions between Marshall and Krikorian’s ideas. Through events and gatherings, Glasgow-based Conal McStravick and Newcastle-based Holly Argent draw on their individual research and shared conversations around Marshall and Krikorian, and frame the exhibition itself as an audio-visual fanzine created in a spirit of collectivity. Late-Night Conversations: Stuart Marshall & Tamara Krikorian is part of LVA50: Celebrating 50 years of video practice in the UK, a year-long programme marking fifty years since the formation of London Video Arts. The opening exhibition, ‘Late-Night Conversations: Stuart Marshall & Tamara Krikorian’, is presented by LUX and co-curated by Conal McStravick and Holly Argent. It draws on materials from the LUX Collection, the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection, CCA’s archive of the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, and the REWIND Artists’ Video Archive, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, as well as the shared research context between LUX in London and LUX Scotland in Glasgow. The wider LVA50 programme is developed in partnership with Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), the University of Westminster’s Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) and a network of UK venues including Spike Island (Bristol), Ambika P3 (London), BALTIC (Gateshead), g39 (Cardiff), LUX Scotland (Glasgow) and Vivid Projects (Birmingham). Supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery Good Cause funding. Read more Toggle Film / Video