THE GOLDEN HOUR

Ace Museum, Los Angeles
2014

Laurent Delaye Gallery, London
1999

Architectural Association, London
1990


10 x 2 Hour Video Tapes (Digitised)
10 Video Monitors

The terms location, environment, and place are not synonymous. In landscape painting they are used to indicate important differences in emphasis. The Arcadian landscapes of Poussin and Claude are locations. They provide an appropriate dramatic setting for action. They help to make such action credible. 

The arrangement exposes the relationship between visual experience, and social, and dramatic significance: the more we look at something, the less likely we are to judge it in crude dramatic or social terms; conversely, the more we approach something with dramatic and social preoccupations, the less we are likely to see. This relation lies at the heart of The Golden Hour, which consists of ten two-hour videotapes played simultaneously.

Nine of the videotapes were made by placing a camera at various roadsides in Southern California – outside a gas station; in a truck stop; on top of a bridge spanning Route 10; opposite several industrial plants; in the desert opposite a laundry; outside a bungalow on a quiet Santa Monica street; the back of the Marlboro sign on Sunset Strip. The tenth tape was made by mounting a camera on the passenger seat of a car, traveling through Death Valley to Las Vegas. Once the cameras had been placed they were activated to record, without any interference from the operator, what happened between the hour of 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. The filming was timed to include the Golden Hour, which is the name given in Southern California to the sixty minutes at sunset when everything is bathed in a golden light.