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The big picture: art meets technology
Conrad Astley25/11/2005
WORK by an artist who has spent the last four decades pushing
technology to its limits while providing an alternative to
mainstream Hollywood is being shown in Manchester.
The city has been chosen as the only European venue for the first
ever gallery exhibition providing a complete retrospective Pat
O'Neill's work.
Despite living and working in the shadow of the Hollywood sign in
Pasadena, Los Angeles, O'Neill has created avant garde films since
the 1960s which seemed a million miles away from anything being
created in the big studios up the road.
He first got into making films through his interest in photography
and graphic design, and his surreal photographs, which often
involve images being juxtaposed against each other, have appeared
in galleries around the world.
His intense artistic films include Water And Power, in which he
used time-lapse photography to show how an LA lake was being
destroyed, and 2002's The Decay of Fiction - in which images from
various pieces overlap to create ghostly effects.
O'Neill also made a name for himself by using technology in
innovative ways - using optical printers as early as the 60s to
manipulate photographs in a way that predated the use of computer
packages such as Photoshop by several decades.
By the early 80s, he was incorporating animation and computer
graphics into his films.
O'Neill once of his work: "The illusion and the denial of the
illusion, are both present at the same time... [Optical printing on
film] is a technology particular to a very specialised craft, which
I am re-using, if you will, in the spirit of collage."
His keen grasp of technology led him to set up Lookout Mountain
Films in 1975, producing special effects for more mainstream big
budget Hollywood productions, even working on films such as Return
of the Jedi and The Game.
O'Neill's films, along with photographs, inkjet prints, film
installations and drawings made throughout the artist's
extraordinary career will be displayed in View From Lookout
Mountain - on at The Cornerhouse until January.
The exhibition has completely taken over the Oxford Road centre,
with his major works being shown in all three galleries, while his
16mm and 18mm films playing in Cinema Two every Tuesday and
Saturday from midday until 6pm.
The View From Lookout Mountain is on until January
15.
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