Videotape >

Sax Island

September 15th, 1984 > Hank Bull and Eric Metcalfe

Record Description

Programme
Media
Type of Production
Western Front Production
Support
Artist in Residence
Distribution
Available from Video Out Distribution.
Number of Copies
1
Length
12 minutes

Content Description

‘Sax Island is a dense and complicated anti-narrative told in fast comic-book images, with live actors in cartoon movement keyed over colourful watercolour backdrops. The artists are interested both in the formal possibilities of combining painting with video (the varieties of perception suggested by this combination) and also in the array of meanings (and lack of meaning) released by the exploding body of mass-media imagery. Each frame of Sax Island is charged and problematic. There is a strange mix of humour and pain in the work. Sax Island is a magic island (in the shape of a saxophone) where everything is ‘clean and pure’ and full of a banal kind of Las Vegas pleasure, isolated from the strife and misfortune that plagues the rest of the world. At a luxurious resort gathers a motley crew that includes Hook Man (a Russian commissar who likes his poison), Beef Bone (a pill popping pool shark), a schizophrenic nurse who flips from black to white, and a mysterious woman in purdah who steals the crucial briefs. Their host, Major OFF watches their movements on his surveillance system as the nurse/muse administers his ‘doodoos’. But don’t worry, they all die in the end except for the enigmatic interloper. The moral (or immoral) of this cut-up is that Sax Island is not hidden in the South Seas but actually find itself right here in Vancouver, or wherever it is you happen to be reading this book.’ (WFVC)

Original Technical Specifications

Format
1" reel
System
NTSC
Condition
Poor

Remastered Technical Specifications

Remastering Date
February 2nd, 2001
Format
3/4" SP
System
NTSC
Condition
Excellent

Production Staff

technical - Randy Gledhill, sound/music - David Kelln

artist biographies

Eric Metcalfe Eric Metcalfe was a co-founder of the Western Front (1973 to the present) of which he continues to be a member. Metcalfe’s start was in Victoria – St. Michaels School, Oak Bay High School, and the University of Victoria from which he received an undergraduate degree in 1969. Special influences fro him were Bill West, Jan Zach, Pat Martin Bates, Richard Ciccimarra, Max Bates, Flemming Jorgensen, Don Harvey, John Dobereiner, and others. Metcalfe’s Dr. Brute alter ego (1969-1975), which expressed itself in performance, was influenced by the fluxus movement which embraced the spontaneous creation of art from materials at hand. Leopard Reality (1969-1974), a collaborative project involving video, performance and installation, looks at notions of public taste. Steel and Flesh (1980), Sax Island (1984) and Duster (1994) – all three are in the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art, New York – further explore societal values. The Vancouver Art Gallery in its recent Classified Materials exhibition (October 15, 2005 – January 2006) exhibited his video, photographic and sculptural piece Howard Hughes Inc. (1977). The Attic Project (2001-2002) consisting of replicas of 5th and 6th century B.C. Greek vessels was a bogus piece to critique museum seriousness. Laura, curated by Lorna Brown, originated in 1999 at Artspeak Conceptual Art Gallery in Vancouver and deconstructs the 1944 film ”Laura” by Otto Preminger. Currently Laura is touring western Canada. MORE >