It’s always exciting when the agency for the Tate Liverpool phone you up. You know that it usually means there’s something interesting in the pipeline; a new exhibition, some sort of retrospective or a unique one off. Regular readers may remember the wonderful Picasso ‘Dove’ that graced our front page a few issues ago (it has since become the office’s favourite cover!) The artwork was one of the defining images of the Tate’s recent showcase of the great man and is a mere slice of the kind of nuggets this wonderful gallery can promote.
‘Nam June Paik,’ said Natalie, the lovely girl from AKA who tells me about the Tate Liverpool’s forthcoming plans. ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of him.’ I said, rather sheepishly. ‘Well..’ said Natalie. She then proceeded to absolutely enthrall me for the next ten minutes about Mr Paik an artist whose work is soon to be one part of the gallery’s winter season.
Now Mr Nam June Paik is universally revered as being one of the first ever video artists – the forefather of the MTV generation. On first thoughts this might be construed as a bad thing. Modern day music videos seem to be little more than scantily clad women and shiny sports cars yet a quick peak on you tube shows that his work is so, so much more than this! In the early 80’s June Paik warped, melded and manipulated video tape and TV pictures to create surreal images that pushed the boundaries of music videos that until then, were relatively conservative in their appearance.
The forthcoming exhibition – due to be highlighted in future issues of IP – aims to shed light on this fascinating artist. I would be very interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on this chap.