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FAD Magazine covers contemporary art – News, Exhibitions and Interviews reported on from London

What’s Right With Art: Video Art at Home

Tabish Khan loves art and visits hundreds of exhibitions a year. In this column he points out failings and in this case positive attributes about the art world.

Avid readers of this column will know I’ve railed against how video art is often presented – with poor seating, unclear narratives and timing.

Well this time I’ve spotted a major improvement in the Matthew Barney exhibition at Hayward Gallery. The show centres around a two hour plus film that’s broadcast on a large screen and with comfortable seating. Now if that’s not winning enough, the ticket also contains a link to watch the film at home. This is a major bonus for anyone who doesn’t fancy wearing a mask for that long or walks in on the middle of the film and doesn’t want to wait for it to start again.

Visitors can get the atmosphere of watching it in the gallery setting as intended but without having to fully commit to a full viewing of the film in the gallery — on top of seeing the rest of the exhibition on their visit.

It’s such a simple thing done well that it makes me wonder why it isn’t done in every exhibition where there’s a lengthy film on show, and hopefully it will be for future exhibitions I visit.

It’s worth noting that some platforms like Daata have been offering video art at home for some time now, and it’s great to see major exhibitions catching on.

Photo: Mark Blower.

For more in this series, see my thoughts on the Hockney roundel, art finds a wayart being freeOnline exhibitionsTurner Prize 2019artist’s request for feedbackthe reaction to the shredded Banksy#FriezeWeek, Blockchain hypeFinding artPrivate viewsArt itselfAppointment only exhibitionsArtificial Intelligence replacing artistsEveryone’s a CriticPhoto LondonThe Turner Prize, Art for art’s sakeConceptual art is complicatedCondoHow performance art is presented in museumsFrieze week floozies, too much respect for an artist’s legacyopinions not being welcomean exhibition across three countriestackling race and gender in artartist-curatorsart fair hypetop 5s and top 10sour political art is terriblegap left by Brian Sewellhow art never learned from the Simpsonswhy artspeak won’t dieso-called reviewsbad reviews are bad for business, the $179m dollar headlineart fairs appealing to the massesfalse opening hourssize matters and what’s wrong with video art.

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