York, England
The First World War was a newspaper conflict, the Second World War was a radio one and Vietnam the first televised war. The Gulf War marked the first conflict to be watched 24 hours a day on cable television. This was "real-time" war where we witness the scud attacks on Israel and the bombings on Baghdad as they happened. If there was a hero it had to be the high-tech equipment of weapons guided by laser beams, computers and video cameras and the video tapes from these weapons.
This was total war, where everything was available to be seen, measured by intervals between sorties. There was no time or space to reflect on the continuous flow of Information. The artists in this exhibition, David Fox, James Radke and Michal Rovner have all made work that responds to the flow of war images.
James Radke using the Polaroid camera has made a war diary by taking photographs of news bulletins broadcasted on television. The diary starts with the bombing of Baghdad and ends with the surrender of the Iraq army. By going through his 400 images we realize the important role that maps played in understanding the war.
If maps played an important role in representing the conflict, so did models of the battle in the desert. Each night on BBC Newsnight Peter Snow could be seen rearranging tanks, ships and planes on a model of the battlefield. Newsnight have kindly loaned the "sand-pit" as it was called, for this exhibition.
John Balzar from the Los Angeles Times described Iraqi soldiers fleeing from bunkers during an attack "like ghostly sheep". This description comes to mind with the work of Michal Rovner. She also has taken images from the TV screen. Already responding to the events which have been mediated , she further manipulates the image until it verges on the abstract. The end results are a semi-hallucinatory images of figures that float in the void of the desert.
By collecting press-cuttings and making notes from radio discussions David Fox created a file on the Gulf War. From this archive he has made large scale prints which make reference to computer games and oil-production.
Paul Wombell
September 11, 1992