DIORAMA at the HENRY ART GALLERY, Seattle: The Henry Art Gallery is currently showing ‘Diorama’, an early multi-channel video installation that I edited during a residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas (in early 2002). The piece is a composition across 9 monitors. It delves into dysfunctional family relationships, looping fragments spoken by members of the Ewing Clan into a dense cacophony that is always displayed in a living room interior. It features the voices of JR, Bobby, Pam, Sue Ellen and other members of the oily fam, in a study of all those neoliberal clichés around aspirational family values. ‘Diorama’ never made it into the collection of the Tate Modern. But this wonderful painting by Sandra Gamarra (see the third slide)—which is based on an installation view of ‘Diorama’—was acquired by the museum, long before my own work was added to the collection. Gamarra was born in the same year as I was, which suggests that her experience of television in the '80s (in her case—from Lima; in my own—from Johannesburg) is likely to have been similar. The Tate has this to say about her painting: “Sandra Gamarra assumes the role of ‘curator’ for her fictional Peruvian museum ‘LiMac' (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima) – an invention of the artist. She adds to the museum’s collection by selecting an artwork and painting it. Exhibition catalogues provide her source imagery, and she titles her paintings with the relevant page number, so the works in the LiMac collection have been mediated first through photography and then through the process of painting. Gamarra’s chose ‘acquisition’ here is by Candice Breitz, whose own work is based on appropriating material from film and television.” ‘Diorama’ Henry Art Gallery Closing: 8 January, 2023 More about the exhibition in which the ‘Diorama' is installed: https://henryart.org/exhibitions/everything-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt