Art on the television is always a problematic exercise so your reviewer was intrigued at the possibilities of a populist Saturday morning show on ITV. Current affairs guru Adrian Chiles had dropped in with an ITV film crew charged with the the difficult task of capturing the latest Fleydon exhibition as part of a new 'live' arts-based documentary. For Fleydon himself televisual exposure added the extra dimension of complexity to his work "I work on two dimesnional surfaces which flutter and play on the breeze in a three dimensional environment. To have them re-viewed and relayed in to the two dimensional world of television frankly confuses me."
These subtlties of nuance were obviously beyond the grasp of the presenter. No true critic himself - and with a literalist style of interpretation - Chiles was obviously seduced by some of the larger works and concentrated his attentions on these whilst quite missing the exquisite gems scattered between. Defective recording equipment prevents us showing the full clip, but these two portions give some idea of the reverential tones in which Chiles approached this cathederal of art, this Tempest of creativity...
The overall look of the Tempest gallery as seen on national television was deemed to be more than satisfactory and we can only hope that the viewers felt a shiver down their spines similar to that experienced by watching Brunowski's Ascent of Man or Clark's Civilization for the first time. Following the Reithian mission statement to Educate & Inform, ITV must also be congratulated on their achievement on this particular day, even if the BBC would have been perhaps a little more probing in their analysis
To clebrate the exhibition and to provide an entertaining 'fore-drop', a football match was arranged between Stevenage and a representative team from AFC Wimbledon to entertain the crowds between viewings. However this was found to be too tempting a distraction for some of the less artistically- inclined cameramen whose attention would stray from art onto the pitch, and we would suggest this arrangement be reviewed in future. Otherwise Art & Artist Review' found the programme a creditable if populist, introduction to a complex and enigmatic artist.
Viewer Rating 7/10
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