The Interview. Peter  Hill and the media

8Ball attended the opening of Peter Hill’s excellent show of unpretentious painting at Artplace last Saturday afternoon in what rapidly became an official capacity. The good folk of Channel 31’s art show turned up to film pieces of paintings framed by people’s backs and fists holding glasses of good wine.  Like many, many others in the media they firmly believe that art happens at openings, full of noise and nonsense.

Even so we got in the spirit of the thing, girded up our loins and gave an interview about the painting above, Standing Still on a Summer’s Morning. It is very long painting made out of doors with every panel the colours of the time of day when it was made. Hill is attempting a well-known solution to the difficulty of painting an authentic landscape experience that dates back beyond Monet – landscape exists through time painting cannot so you end up with a set of very well painted decorative movie stills like Monet’s Haystacks.

Well we said all this in the required chatty manner – for God’s sake never sound as though you want any one to pay attention if you’re talking about art – on television only dumb blokes in blazers  get away with that.  We even pointed with unhappy bravado at paintings to film, knowing that it would all be edited to buggery and back so that nothing exciting or original would reach the screen.

Of course we couldn’t do what television should always do and never does, show details for quiet contemplation, comment on the artist ‘s skill in linking technique to  meaning  life to  decoration.  Hill’s most important is the pattern of brushstroke with which he moulds the ridges in a  pair of work gloves or the fluffy light of cloud .

To film that you must turn when the gallery is empty and work hard on having something to say about the paintings rather than rely on what some drunken wanker may spew forth at the opening.