George Barber

Biographical details:

George Barber was born in Georgetown, Guyana and went to St Martins and The Slade. His compilation "The Greatest Hits Of Scratch Video" is internationally known and has been featured in many galleries and festivals across the world. His two contributions to the tape, 'Absence of Satan' and ' Yes Frank No Smoke' are still screened regularly and are important in the history of British Video Art.

He has had an installation at Tate Britain 2006 entitled 'Automotive Action Painting' (funded by Film & Video Umbrella) and shows of his video sculptures, 'The Long Commute' at Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery Brooklyn, New York 2007. He has also been part of numerous programmes at Tate Modern and had retrospectives at the ICA, New York Film & Video Festival and recently at La Rochelle Festival, France. He has been written about by Paul Morley. Mike O'Pray and Gareth Evans, the Time Out & Vertigo magazine critic. LUX is releasing a DVD compilation of his work, soon to be available world wide in all gallery book shops. Film & Video Umbrella have released a monograph. Seventeen Gallery and Anthony Wilkinson have also shown his work.

Barber is eclectic, his ideas varied. Narrative and found footage seem to be at the centre of much of his work, either deconstructing it or trying as an artist to evolve an approach that is contradictory to the maker's original intention. Barber's skills as a writer have led him to produce many lyrical works too, including 'Walking Off Court' and 'Withdrawal' and various monologues like 'I Was Once In A Shit Show' and 'Refusing Potatoes'. His recent work, 'Following Your Heart" and "Losing Faith" goes back to using off-air adverts and tv films, mostly American. The central conceit is to take found footage and manipulate it into a new artistic experience. The ingredients of television are inverted and put to new purposes.

He has also produced a number of 'conceptual works, like "Automotive Action Painting" and "Shouting Match" or "Beyond Language" which reference early video art yet are contemporary too. "Automotive Action Painting" won First Prize at the 24th Hamburg International Short Film Festival in June 2008.