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Susan Hiller Susan Hiller was the subject of a major Tate Britain exhibition just last year. Though American born, Susan Hiller has lived and worked in Britain for over 30 years. Hiller is considered one of the most influential artists of her generation and has exhibited her work internationally in countless galleries. Susan Hiller's work can be found in the collections of the British Council, Centre Pompidou, Contemporary Art Society, Israel Museum, National Gallery of Art of South Australia, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and The Victoria and Albert Museum amongst many others. We will be showing Susan Hiller's Belshazzar's Feast at the exhibition. This is what Alicia Foster of Tate Publishing wrote about the piece: "Belshazzar's Feast was the first video installation to be acquired by Tate ... The video programme which is the core of this work was broadcast all over Britain by Channel 4 in 1986 ... Hiller's Belshazzar's Feast is an investigation of the phenomenon of reverie sometimes produced by television viewing. Her video programme creates effects that enable viewers to enter a zone of liminality, and in this sense the work is a demonstration of the power of imagination which we all have. Like the prophet Daniel, who could interpret but not read the mysteries writing on Belshazzar's wall, viewers glean hints of revelation from the segmented soundtrack. The artist whispers newspaper reports of alien beings seen on television screens after closedown, while interspersed with this she sings in an improvisational style, and a child describes from memory the Bible story of Belshazzar's Feast as depicted in Rembrandt's painting in the National Gallery. The visuals are a seductive stream of manipulated images of fire, referring to Marshall McLuhan's suggestion that the television set has replaced the hearth as the focus of the home." |
