GLASGOW.- Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art presents a group exhibition with works by Stansfield/Hooykaas, Arthur Ginsberg with Video Free America and Videofreex, which explores the beginnings of video as an art form and its relationship to counterculture. A new commission by Heather Phillipson considers how the normalisation of personal video recording has affected contemporary society.

Please Turn Us On opens to the public on 28 July 2016 in Gallery 3. Using the recently acquired seminal work by Stansfield/Hooykaas ‘What’s it to you? (1975)’ the exhibition looks at how artists used early ‘home video’ equipment to empower themselves and the communities in which they lived and worked.

‘What’s it to you?’ has only ever been shown once before in the UK at the Third Eye Centre, for one week, in 1975. It is one of the first examples of video installation presented as artwork in Britain. Two years previous Tom McGrath, director of the Third Eye Centre, purchased a Sony PortaPak, dubbed ‘the first video camera in Scotland’. It was made available to the public, opening up a new method of record making, documentation and experimentation.

This exhibition will look at the huge impact this innovative purchase would have in Glasgow, Scotland and internationally. Central to the exhibition are archive materials relating to the production of ‘What’s it to you?’ which are presented alongside two similar works from the same era: Videofreex’s anarchic pirate TV experiment Greetings from Lansville (1976) and Arthur Ginsberg with Video Free America’s pioneering fly on the wall work The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd (1970-1975).

Please Turn Us On explores how elements from these key pieces played a vital role in the emergence of video as an art form and how they influenced international culture over the coming years. In addition, these defining works and the pioneering use of video as an artistic medium challenge the commonly held notion of the ‘Glasgow Miracle’, instead promoting the more accurate idea that the city has a long and rich history of being at the forefront of artistic creativity.

A new commission by British artist, Heather Phillipson (b.1978) complements the exhibition. Text displayed on the gallery wall invites visitors to ponder how the normalization of personal video recording has affected contemporary society.

Speaking about the project, curator of contemporary art, GoMA Will Cooper said: “Showing What’s it to You? is massively exciting. The project has only ever been shown once before, at Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre in 1975 and even then it was only on display for a week. Here we have an amazing opportunity to display parts of the original installation in a new context which helps place Glasgow slap-bang in the middle of an internaitonal dialogue about the genesis of video as an art form. The other films in the show, made with a similarly brave, counterculture vibe offer visitors the chance to experience two other rarely seen projects in The Contuning Story of Carel and Ferd and Videofreex’s Greetings From Lanesville.

“These three works are so relevent today in an age where we are constantly presenting and re-presenting ourselves accross new and untested media. The speed at which social media has grasped the publics imagination is breathtaking, but what these new platforms offer us isn’t as untested as one might believe. The blurring of private and public has been going on for far longer than Facebook and the challenges thrown up are suprisingly similar to those discussed in these projects way back in the 70s.”