A.M./P.M.: Description for ‘A.M/P.M.’ with still, Video Maar Holland, 1989

“This is one of the ‘maritime’ pieces I made in the early 1980s. I was always influenced by an image from film by the Canadian Artist Joyce Weiland entitled ‘Sailboat’, in which that word appears bluntly against the edge of a boat moving across the screen. This being a triptych, it involved more elements that that deceptively simple film but nevertheless I wanted the 3 screens to appear as an impassive hole like a machine which merely displays nuances and inflections. The displayed text may also reflect the influence of Lawrence Weiner whose text works I admire greatly. Sometime after completing this work I realised the shock and even embarrassment that far from being the cool formal piece I thought it to be at the time every visual element in it, in fact, displayed blatantly an emotional crisis I was experiencing at the time.” Mick Hartney, March 2008