Chapter 13
Yellow TV
In May 1970 in Sydney, Martin Sharp had an exhibition at the Clune Galleries in Macleay St, Potts Point. Then, in April 1971, he reprised this show in miniature with his Incredible Shrinking Exhibition and with this event established the Yellow House within the now closed Clune Gallery building. Sharp created the Yellow House as an all enveloping artwork based on the artists' commune that van Gogh had set up in the sun in Arles, France. It provided a gallery space where Sharp, Bruce Goold, Peter Wright, Albie Thoms, Greg Weight, Jonny Lewis, Roger Foley and for a short time Mick Glashen and Juno Gemes as well as many other artists working in pop art, filmmaking, music and photography could set up ongoing installations consisting in rooms dedicated to either certain themes or to certain artists, for example the Magritte room or Brett Whitely s Bonsai tree room. [1]
Fig.1: The Bonsai tree from Brett Whiteley's space in the Yellow House.
Frame from Akai Ghost Poems [Courtesy: Albie Thoms]
While involved with the Yellow House Albie Thoms had taken on the project to record a video (using a borrowed 1/4 Akai porta-pak) of Copping creating his installation at Inhibodress. During that period Albie and colleagues used the Akai porta-pak to shoot Yellow TV which documented a month long series of events at the Yellow House. Thoms also worked as a 'rock' journalist and wrote about Yellow TV for the Melbourne rock magazine Planet, [2] noting that:
“Yellow TV is a thirty five hour movie: a home video movie that is expanded cinema in a very crude form.” [3]
He describes the making of Yellow TV, as well as some of the opportunities the Akai 1/4 porta-pak camera offered such as not having to look into the viewfinder but being able to watch it on a monitor in real-time as the recording occurs. Although its image quality was significantly below that of Broadcast TV, Thoms did observe that the hand-held camera becomes an extension of the nervous system of the operator. [Fig.7]
Fig.2: Tom Barber's drawing of video as an extension
of the nervous system. [Courtesy: Aline Barber]
He also mentions the potential for video (or light) feedback, likening it to the way a guitarist will play with the sound by producing audio feedback.
“Just point the camera at the monitor and feed its own signal into itself. An infinite regression results which introduces cosmic speculations.” [4]
He then suggests some of the other potentials of widely available video, such as video letters and video consulted like books.
“What it shows is the flux in Bruce Copping s sculpture exhibition in parallel with the flux in the Yellow House commune. There are ninety separate tapes. Each exploring some aspect of video ... [and] indicative of the non-authoritarian attitudes of the commune.” [5]
Fig.3: Albie Thoms with the Akai portapk. [Courtesy: Greg Weight]
The Bruce Copping installation and the Yellow TV tapes are described in an entry in the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op distribution catalogue for 1972.
“The coverage of the sculptor s activities range from documentation through expressionistic improvisation, to real-time recording, interviews, and video improvisations by students and visitors to the gallery. Tapes range from the record of the sculptor s arrival at the gallery and his unloading of ladders through his hanging of drawings, photographs and other aspects of his exhibition, to his stringing activities inside the gallery and in the street outside. These tapes form a record of creative activity as well as a psychological document of the sculptor as he builds himself into a web until this isolates him from the public he sought to attract. One of the final tapes shows him staring mutely at the camera which records his defeated attitude and his inability to communicate. Towards the end of the exhibition the sculptor destroyed an early tape on which he expressed his intentions in creating the exhibition. The final tape shows him ordering the camera out of the gallery, threatening to smash it. However, instead of doing this, the sculptor leaves the gallery, empty save for artworks, and the camera recording the moment.”
Thoms added to his remark that the video camera was regarded as an extension of the nervous system, noting that it extends the eye away from the head so that the operator could look behind themselves and from the hip while viewing the image on a video monitor rather than the viewfinder. The idea that the new electronic technologies being made available to art were prosthetics allowing extensions to the human body through various kinds of interaction (eg, with Philippa Cullen and her dance driven sound expression) and extension of memory through the role of the feedbacks that I have discussed above and that were particularly explored by Bush Video (see Chapter 19).[8]
Fig.4: Martin Sharp's Magritte Room at the Yellow House. [Courtesy: Greg Weight] |
Fig.5: Martin Sharp's Incredible Shrinking Exhibition at ANU, 1971. [Courtesy: Greg Weight] |
Fig.6: Martin Sharp's Ice Room at the Yellow House. [Courtesy: Greg Weight] |
Fig.7: Magritte Room in the Yellow House. [Courtesy: Greg Weight]
“Further experiments were conducted in the Yellow House and at Inhibodress Gallery with video feedback, replaying tapes of previous-time activities and recording the responses as this information is fed into the environment situation. These experiments include a session in which continuous feedback was applied over a period of five hours recording and rerecording so that eventual information on the video screen shows four re-recordings of the original information. Further experiments in rerecording were made shooting off the monitor and adding soundtracks.
“In addition, tapes were recorded over, partially erasing information already recorded, creating collages that altered time arrangements, placing events in non-sequential order, with random juxtaposition and chance associations.” [6]
Fig.8: Albie Thoms.
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The tapes were given to the National Film and Sound Archive by Thoms and some of them were converted from the Akai format. From the transferred tapes Thoms then produced Akai Ghost Poems, an edit of the material which provides an interesting series of insights into the life of the denizens of the Yellow House for a short moment of its life as they assembled their spring exhibition, [Figs.16-18] but includes none of the Bruce Copping material. The problems that continually arose with video in this early period are brought out again in the Yellow TV tapes. It is of distinctly low resolution, especially for people used to looking at the quality of 16mm and 35mm film. |
Fig.9: Aggy Read. | As Thoms put it: Guerilla TV constantly reminds you that you're watching video. [7] But it was also very unstable and impossible to edit, as Perry was experiencing in London, as Thoms and the members of the Australian version of TVX had experienced, and as had the experimenters gathered around the Cantrills in Melbourne. The mobility of the portable equipment and the necessity to edit in camera meant a constant stopping and restarting of the recorder. Each time you restarted, the tape and the recording heads would have to come up to speed, recording slewing fluid pictures for often up to a couple of seconds as they did so. Another of the denizens of the Yellow House was Jonny Lewis, who later became a member of Bush Video, where he, more or less became the house photographer. Lewis comments |
Fig.10: Jonny Lewis. |
“Yes, I had the great pleasure of stumbling into the Yellow House, firstly. And at that stage, Bruce Gould was a good friend. I don't think I'd met Mick [before that]. “I was too busy trying to do something for myself that meant something. I think emotionally, one of the hardest things I'd had to endure was my parents splitting up. [Possibly sometime in the late 1960s.] “There were people like Martin Sharp, and Mick to a great extent. People such as these. They were wonderful. I was blessed because these people were good, and recognised something of themselves in me, which was really... And there was a few music venues up in the Cross. I remember there seeing Jeff St. John up there, in his wheelchair and thought... |
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Fig.11: Thoms at the Akai 1/4" portapak. |
“Wow. It was a great era of learning about yourself and learning about life, and the possibilities of life were fantastic. “Albie Thomas was very good, and he has left a big hole as well. [Albie died at the end of 2012]. But I had no idea what an experimental film was. I ended up going to the co-op, and ended up thinking, "Gee, maybe I can have a go with this." The thing that I found difficult, though, was of course, I had no experience and I had no idea.. The Yellow House served those spaces well, because I remember being in a new theatre piece that they did and I think I was a monkey or something, I had to jump around chairs and stuff. There was the actor in me. But somehow, what eventually happened in those Yellow House years was that I received a camera from Martin which had paint all over it. |
Fig.12: Mick Glasheen. |
“But somehow, what eventually happened in those Yellow House years was that I received a camera from Martin which had paint all over it. It was a Nikomat, I remember that. And I was lent it for about... I was allowed to use it for a couple of weeks. Well, once I had that camera it was years before Martin got it back again, but he couldn't get too cranky with me because I was actually doing stuff with it, or trying to. And I don't know where that camera is now but we should put gold leaf over it. It should be on a plinth somewhere because it was a beautiful piece of sculpture that gave me a sense of purpose. And...”[9] |
Fig.13: Albie Thoms and Dick Weight. |
This is what led Jonny Lewis to become a photographer. “It took a long time for me to become convinced that that was the way I was to go. I was not in a hurry for some reason, and I remember Charlie Brown, a wonderful gentleman, quaint, I've never met anyone quite like... “Charlie was great and there were people that just... through their own personalities, just wanted to encourage and make something of their world. And I remember Charlie saying, “Oh, you gotta see Greg Weight”. And he was the photographer for Dolly. I think he did quasi-fashion stuff. And I remember the address was South Dowling street. It wasn't as busy as it is today. [10] |
Fig.14: The Yellow House cat checking out the Akai portapak. |
“And I went down there... I rang him up, Charlie gave me the phone number and I rang him up, he said okay and we made a date. And I went down to his place on the given day, knocked on the door and this fella came and walked in and gave me a cup of tea. And he said, “Now, how can I help you?” And I said I wanna be a photographer, and he said, as he got up from the chair, he said, “Well, go and make photographs.” And I said, “Oh, that's a good idea.” And he led me to the door and off I went. “William Yang was also starting out at that stage. He might have been a little bit before me, not that it mattered. But we would see one another around the traps a bit. And, yeah I started going to these things and photographing and learning and processing and... At that stage, it was relatively easy to get work. Now, I don't know what's happening there with Sydney’s so called, Sydney Society. Nor do I care too much.” [11] |
