Lenny's Documentary, Ian Bourn, 1978

Dates: 9 September – 7 November | Location: Raven Row, London

Polytechnic is an exhibition of video, installation and tape/slide works made between the mid seventies and early eighties by a number of artists in the UK who were developing new relationships between ‘experimental’ media and ideas of narrative. The complex and hybrid works in the exhibition talk about autobiography, television, diaries, lost histories, sexuality, the communist bloc, popular culture, fictions, soap operas and murder.

Polytechnic has a particular emphasis on video work. As well as the emergence of the domestic video recorder, the period covered by the exhibition saw artists gaining increasing access to video cameras and recording decks. This engagement with technology was encouraged through the development of media departments in Art Schools and Polytechnics, where many of the artists studied and taught.

The artists featured are John Adams, Ian Bourn, Ian Breakwell, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, David Critchley, Catherine Elwes, Roberta Graham, Susan Hiller, Stuart Marshall, Cordelia Swann and Graham Young. Polytechnic is curated by Richard Grayson, an artist curator and writer based in London.