B.

Nature meets the electronic age in a specially commissioned version of Nam June Paik's TV Garden, first created in 1974.

Forty television sets, placed on their backs, sides and upside down, take on the form of exotic electronic flora in a lush garden of sight and sound. Colour, rather than scent, pulsates through the petals of these unnatural flowers in a series of intricate collages, including Global Groove, which was created in 1973 using a video synthesiser that Paik invented with Suya Abe, a Japanese engineer. The synthesiser enabled Paik to mix, polarise, layer, colour and distort images from several video and TV sources to create dazzling arrays of colour and sound.

Paik was born in Korea in 1932 and studied music and art at the University of Tokyo. After his graduation in 1956, he furthered his musical studies at the University of Munich and the Conservatory in Freiburg. It was in Germany that Paik's lifelong obsession with fusing music, art and electronics emerged. 'A German who studied radar during the war told me that radar waves make an interesting painting. Then I had an idea. Why don't I move from electronic music into electronic painting with the TV? Then I will find something new the moving painting, with sound.'

In 1963, Paik produced his first television piece in which he removed the TV set from its customary context and function and altered its components to produce unexpected effects. This work signalled the beginning of a lifelong effort to deconstruct and demystify television and to change the perception of television as simply mass home entertainment. Since this initial television sculpture, Paik has used television sets in a multitude of ventures from massive video walls, ceilings and floors comprising hundreds of TVs to quirky electronic robots whose limbs and bodies are often constructed from monitors. In the context of the art world, Paik turned the television set into the material of an entire art movement, of which he remains a leader. His work playfully critiques and celebrates the age of electronic media, recognising the key part the television plays in the electronic revolution we are currently experiencing.

The tour of Paik's TV Garden was initiated by the City Gallery, Wellington, and the Christchurch exhibition is generously supported by the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Contemporary Art Annex in the Arts Centre.