ANTONY Hall was selected for City Life's Show of the Year award in 2003. We haven't seen him since.

So the mid-point of the year seems a fitting moment to catch up and find out how he's developing in 2004.

Has he come down from the lofty heights of winning such a prestigious art prize?
Hall laughs: 'Yeah, I've been making new work - and finishing off old work' developing.'

For the uninitiated, part of Hall's art involves an odd merging of science with art: 3D installations which sit somewhere between experiments fit for a laboratory and art fit for a gallery.

They engage huddles of visitors like no other art seems to manage, making Hall very special. So what's new?

'I've ended up making a lot of tables cos I used to get fed up having to go round junk shops. I hadn't made anything for ages. So I've made a lot this year.'

That's good to hear, because we've always seen Hall as an artist who confounds lazy labelling or quick criticism.

Hall's one of few who is able to straddle different aspects of art. He makes objects and he appropriates 'found objects'.

Teacher

He's teacher and researcher in one, conducting talks as part of his gallery shows yet always learning himself.

He's intellectually agile yet his work is not weighed down with the burden of being clever.
Hall is also 'artist' and 'performer'.

One of several ongoing concerns is The Owl Project, in collaboration with his 'partner in performance' Simon Blackmore.

Together as the Owls, Hall and Blackmore perform random shards of sound in odd - frogmen? - costumes, using their self-styled design icon, the LOG 1K. The LOGs are indeed wooden logs with lo-fi electronic instrumentation built in.

Technological

In part, it's a sobering mockery of today's obsession with technological 'wizardry' and 'the latest' gadgetry. We trust they're working on a hand-held i-LOG, at time of publication.

'We've re-built what's inside the LOGs,' Hall explains. 'Adding the Memory Sticks, which can sample sound. They're like Christmas card quality microchips' so we can record new sounds.

But we're concentrating on the idea of performance rather than the idea of music.'
Performance offers news horizons of, both, experience and of what 'art' might be; areas which traditional fine arts falter with.

So it's good to hear of Hall developing in rangy ways. He is a shining example to contemporary artists everywhere.

There's a lot of rubbish in the visual arts. A lot of jostling for 'reputation'. But, like a prospector panning, you can still find rough diamonds shining out.

Antony Hall, Chapman Gallery from May 28

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