George Barber

Thirsty? The longing created by advertising is satirised in this remix of Schweppes advertising.

On the left side of this video diptych sequences of a typical Hollywood movie of the genre "airplane catastrophy" are showing, while on the right side a man liying in a bath tub talks about how he gradually came to terms with the actual trauma of such a catastrophy and his fear of water. Not only by the contrast of documentary interview and fictional processing of the same topic, but by the redundancies of sound and images between both "panels", telling itself and being told has come to the point.

The inside story of the long-running Hovis TV advertisement as Barber’s voice-over highlights the psychological emptiness of the narratives delivered daily by consumer culture.

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

A humorous rooftop monologue: George Barber explains how he sees the year developing, while waiting for the ever unreliable Dave.

A comic monologue, I Was Once In A Shit Show is a recollection of an imaginary art event that tallies with what most artists experience when they are involved in putting on an unfunded group show.

"Walking Off Court concerns a story I saw in the Times about a tennis coach called James Goodman who had a nervous breakdown around about the time that a motorway was built right outside his house. He spent a lot of time aimlessly walking in circles around new roads and road works. I contacted him and even ended up playing tennis with him. The video is loosely the story around his experience and his changing relationship to his normal circumstances." - George Barber

Video art by George Barber.

Short film.

Thirsty? The longing created by advertising is satirised in this remix of Schweppes advertising.

Actor Brian Hickey performs a parody of a TV weatherman in a film which reminds us just how mannered most weather presentations are.

This revolves around Tim West, an advertising executive who is developing a Channel 4 programme on cooking for terrorists. Disillusioned by the hyper-reality of the media world, he joins Robert de Niro evening classes, but also falls under the pastoral influence of Johnny Morris. From the opening images of night-time, car-ridden streets accompanied by languorous sax on the soundtrack, through to the sub-Chandleresque voice-over narration, Taxi Driver II strikes you with its clever knowingness. But it's more than just a clever nod in the direction of contemporary film noir, just as it's more than an incestuous joke at the expense of the London based media world: it's a telling comment on the contemporary media culture of postmodernism.

This revolves around Tim West, an advertising executive who is developing a Channel 4 programme on cooking for terrorists. Disillusioned by the hyper-reality of the media world, he joins Robert de Niro evening classes, but also falls under the pastoral influence of Johnny Morris. From the opening images of night-time, car-ridden streets accompanied by languorous sax on the soundtrack, through to the sub-Chandleresque voice-over narration, Taxi Driver II strikes you with its clever knowingness. But it's more than just a clever nod in the direction of contemporary film noir, just as it's more than an incestuous joke at the expense of the London based media world: it's a telling comment on the contemporary media culture of postmodernism.

Short film.

Made using footage from USA Olympics in Los Angeles 1984 and snippets of Alistair Cooke's America: A Personal History of the United States. The footage was combined at Goldsmith's Art Department using an unusual Grass Valley mixer that had oscillating wipes which created the signature colours and wiggly lines. (Modern Art Oxford) Barber was always the most polished of the Scratch video artists, and Tilt shows his ability to make seductive, easy-viewing pieces, while maintaining a subversive undercurrent.

Short film.

On the left side of this video diptych sequences of a typical Hollywood movie of the genre "airplane catastrophy" are showing, while on the right side a man liying in a bath tub talks about how he gradually came to terms with the actual trauma of such a catastrophy and his fear of water. Not only by the contrast of documentary interview and fictional processing of the same topic, but by the redundancies of sound and images between both "panels", telling itself and being told has come to the point.

Barber constructs a curious biography around his father's relationship to his nephew Alan Rickman who he dislikes one Christmas for refusing to eat potatoes – and the Barber family are later shocked at the Premiere to find that Rickman has ripped them off and used their father's speech in the movie Michael Collins.

The inside story of the long-running Hovis TV advertisement as Barber’s voice-over highlights the psychological emptiness of the narratives delivered daily by consumer culture.

Short film.

George Barber deconstructs two feature films, The Blue Lagoon and The Deep, pillaging ‘moments’ which when re-edited constitute a new totality.

A home movie on permanent loop. Live action up for grabs. A family walk the walk across a field, disappearing into memory as they do. Who knows where the families go? In the countryside on a sunny day a family group repeatedly walk towards the camera. The ‘home movie’ is looped and the footage is digitally manipulated so that each time they pass, the family members steadily disappear, the landscape also appearing to 'withdraw'.

A home movie on permanent loop. Live action up for grabs. A family walk the walk across a field, disappearing into memory as they do. Who knows where the families go? In the countryside on a sunny day a family group repeatedly walk towards the camera. The ‘home movie’ is looped and the footage is digitally manipulated so that each time they pass, the family members steadily disappear, the landscape also appearing to 'withdraw'.

Film by George Barber.

A humorous rooftop monologue: George Barber explains how he sees the year developing, while waiting for the ever unreliable Dave.

Short film.

Following Your Heart uses off-air adverts and minor films. The central conceit is to take found footage and manipulate it into a new artistic experience. The adverts all relate to the heart in some way, either through health or in the usual capitalistic fashion asking people to consume by appealing to their emotions. A variety of adverts are used, ranging from the mobile campaigns, credit cards, bread, new DVDs, to Fantastic Voyage, the classic film about a miniature craft inserted into some poor souls blood stream. Yet, as the piece intimates, following your heart does have consequences – it is not something we can always do – in shops or in life. The messages start to collide and contradict.

A film about the discrepancy between the random and the intended. Chance meetings, chance adventures, holiday anecdotes and the slowed down inevitability of an eagle catching a fish.

An unmanned drone deviates from its destined flight path, as it wanders through time and space its camera surveys its surroundings and the robot narrates its findings.

A meditation on product history. A lo-fi dramatisation of Vidal’s Sassoon’s momentous, groundbreaking invention of the shampoo Wash & Go.

A comic monologue, I Was Once In A Shit Show is a recollection of an imaginary art event that tallies with what most artists experience when they are involved in putting on an unfunded group show.