Tony Hart Project

Running for a period of several weeks, the Tony Hart Project was the brainchild of ATers Smashew Matthew and Bonkers Ben, and took place in Reading, UK in November 1998. The concept was simple: a homage to TV child-art icon, gummed paper guru and sponge-painting high priest Tony Hart, a godlike figure in the child-lives of the two artists. They decided to produce photocopied enlargements of Tony's head and distribute them widely. They then procured a computer laser printer, which they named 'Tony' to produce the master image. Transcripts from interviews were made up, and edited down into press releases. These where worked up into short filmed interviews made by the artists, in which they added a further layer of duality by posing as actors representing themselves. The interviews were duplicated on a variety of video formats and sent to local and national broadcasters.

At this point, a flaw became obvious. Matthew recalls: "we realised that we'd imagined everything in a two and a half minute conversation at least two floors above ground level. This only added more weight to the project, so we ended it there to prevent any real activity from spoiling the whole thing: it had to remain pristine."

Evidence is counted as unnecessary in AT, where naturally enough it is aimless specualtion that marks out the most visionary projects. As a result it is expected that Charles Scraatchi will be backing further work at the leading edge of AT: a suitable figure to approve of the phenomenon, say Matt and Ben. "We're pleased that the hype-manufacturers of the advertising world have shut up long enough to notice just how much the AT movement is giving them assistance, despite the negative, ironical tone it adopts" quipped Ben, and Matt assured us that a new project about screwdrivers was already on the cards, so to speak.