Quotes:

The following transcript is an excerpt from Pictorial Heroes Comments from the Artists : where Doug Aubrey and Alan Robertson reflect on their collaborative practice 'Pictorial Heroes'

PICTORIAL HEROES

DOUG AUBREY:

Having spent the better half of the last five years working with/for/in/against/outside of and constantly in conflict with the medium, this new installation work comes at an interesting stage in our collaborations.
There is much talk now of a return to conceptualism, minimalism, and the like-reactions more than anything else against the development of a technology and a professional state which is increasingly at odds with many Artists on the one hand, whilst on the other says something about the need to rediscover the importance of ideas and an artist’s sensibility in a culture which has scant regard for anything immaterial.
Design is the buzz word now, with many ‘artists’ falling foul of the style obsessed state of things and becoming content to simply appropriate anything from constructivism to surrealism in pursuit of their questionable goal of meeting the demands of the marketplace.

Conceptualism and such a highly charged medium as television, video or whatever one calls it are not easy bed mates – but then nor are politics and art.
The temptation to react against the technology remains, though the answer does not lie in a return to pluralism or the desire for a ‘new age’. All are considerations which I feel that Pictorial Heroes have been attempting to tackle – whilst at the same time, remain aware of the ‘state of the art’, the real potential of the medium and the need to express anger, frustration, and more sensitive emotions and attitudes towards the things which affect us and our contemporaries.

Many of the works are both successes and disasters at the same time – many have been curious hi-bred/hi-tech reactions to what is essentially a realist perspective on things.
Others have been driven by ‘performance’, action and gesture in an attempt to exorcise a certain sense of things – a spirit if you like.
All have been active attempts to both use technology and transcend technology relating it to the world in which we’ve lived up till now and have enabled us to realize both individual and collective potential.
The collaborations themselves have quite often gone beyond simply Allan and myself and often involved many others – as performers, reluctant tape pirates, operators, drivers etc and will continue to do so.
I feel the nature of the medium and its complexity necessitates this collaboration – which in itself calls into questions the role of ourselves as Artists. In this sense I regard collaboration – whether which performers or technical wizards as a superior and higher art form- which celebrates and hi-lights the achievements of the individual artists involved.

Working with people and the dialogue which ensues is just as relevant as sitting isolated in a studio or edit suite for eighteen hours a day is – but the dialogue- whether it’s in hustling for gear, or in soft talking performers and in trying to get the best from people and the technology plays a central role in anything Pictorial Heroes have tried to achieve to date.