To coincide with a new DVD publication on George Barber, published by London’s leading moving image agency, LUX, Street Level presented a selection of Barbers work with an introduction by the artist. A pioneer of British video art, once described in Art Monthly as ‘the Henry Ford of independent video’ George Barber gained an international reputation with Scratch Video. Moving away from Scratch in the early 90’s, Barber created many low-tech video pieces and was influential in defining the then emergent ‘slacker’ aesthetic.

‘Several of Barber’s fantastic Scratch-era pieces appear on Beyond Language many of which betray the influence of earlier video artists like Dara Birnbaum and Nam June Paik, filtered through a sharp post-punk sensibility… Barber’s later work retains his outsider wit, exploring video as a medium for the slacker raconteur: taking the piss out of adverts by adding new verbal sound tracks in Schweppes Ad (1993) and Hovis Ad (1994) or spinning enigmatic art-world allegories in Waiting for Dave (1993) and I Was Once Involved in a Shit Show (2003)…’
Ed Halter, Artforum, 20.3.09