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In ‘The Weather’, actor Brian Hickey performs a hilarious parody of a television weatherman. Using unintelligible language with ecstatic gestures and emphatic mimicry he conjures happily with the elements. The computer generated background shows cheerful and dynamic weather charts as if they were made by a designer with a somewhat childish streak. The imitation and twisting of TV codes and ‘formats’, together with a jocular world vision in which nonsense is combined with melancholy are recurring themes in all of George Barber’s works. In earlier works like ‘Fistful’ or ‘Colour’ or ‘Yes Frank No Smoke’ Barber shows himself to be a true ‘scratch’ artist who is a virtuoso at bending TV material to his own ends. ‘The Story of Wash & Go’ or ‘Hovis Ad’ also play with the language of TV, specifically with that of advertisement, but Barber’s armamentarium has become more versatile and the form more hybrid. The recent ‘Ansaphone’ shows Barber’s more reflective side, while the form in ‘2CB Curtain Trip’ is determined by computer graphics. Barber’s entire opus seems to be an investigation into the way in which we relate to the everyday world, in particular the world as propagated by TV and advertisement. Where is there space between us and the images? How do we let ourselves get taken in by images and articles? Question which are not asked from a cynical attitude to life but rather from a deep involvement in it.
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Jorinde Seijdel
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Thanks to Stuart Sargent, Craig Zerouni, Janet Lee, Brian Hickey, Abina Manning
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