David Dye. 1st Floor West, High Bridge Studios. 2011
‘My recent PhD is titled Backwards into the Future: an exploration into revisiting, re-presenting and rewriting art of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This exploration grew out of being requested to remake work I created originally during this time. For example for Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain 1965-75 Whitechapel Art Gallery 2000 I re-configured a film installation originally made for The New Art, Hayward Gallery 1972. At Tate Modern in 2009 as part of the Expanded Cinema: activating the space of reception conference I showed a re-presented film `performance` of a work originally made and shown at a weekend film festival at the ICA in 1976. These exhibitions above show that my past installations may also exist in the present by being re-made or re-presented time and again through various manifestations’.
During the 1980s Dye experimented with drawing and its relation to the video or still camera: a relation between traditional media and technology, and these works were only occasionally shown publicly, but they still remain as documentation and plans which can be installed as the occasion arises.
‘This huge 1st floor space has a cave-like or underground car park quality and I shall be using surveillance cameras and monitors to give different viewpoints on stretched drawings on the walls. This work will be developed as I work in the space during the residency`
David Dye: studied at St Martin`s School of Art BA 1968-72; Goldsmith`s College MA 1985-87. Teaching at Northumbria University since 1980. MA Fine Art Course Leader 1992 – 2010. PhD University of Northumbria 2010-11.
helensmithresearch 
I watched with growing curiousity David’s journey from CCTV to delicate water colours. The limited scope of the camera provided a flattened and distorted perspective, an illusionary space like a theatre stage. I was reminded of Japanese prints with the shallow plane and theatrical constructs, the delicate colours and washes reminiscent of the Floating Worlds. The space is large and beautiful and could prove difficult but the resulting paintings, small and dreamlike stood up to David’s vision. The most poignant painting for me was the tiny figure on a spacious dias pondering on where to go next.