Jessica Voorsanger Meets Gary Cook / Julie Roberts Meets Three Junior Doctors

Examples of Voorsanger’s work, focusing on her series on actor David Cassidy, from The Partridge Family. Voorsanger (mostly VO) talking about her fascination with "celebrity", the experiences of celebrities, and the experiences of fans. Gary Cook, self-styled "biggest fan" of Blackpool Football Club, at a Blackpool match, and at home, talking about the kinds of art he doesn’t and does like. Match. Voorsanger says she can relate to the hype about the obsessiveness of football fans. Wants to collaborate with the fan for whom she’s making this new work. Blackpool seafront. Voorsanger meets Cook in his house where’s he’s surrounded by football programmes and other memorabilia. The garden. Cook and Voorsanger visit Blackpool football stadium. He tells her about his memory of a game in 1970 (coincidentally the year The Partridge Family first aired) when Blackpool were promoted to the First Division. She describes about the need to align oneself with either the David Cassidy or the Donny Osmond camp when she was at school. Cook at football match, and Voorsanger on the Golden Mile (intercut with part of film of signatures at Graumann’s Chinese Cinema) talking about what he might expect from her work. Voorsanger at tile factory, and talking to Blackpool team about what she’s going to do. Each of them makes an impression of his bare feet (or hands) in a wet clay square, and signs it. On Blackpool beach, Voorsanger shows Cook some of her "more extreme work". A packet of objects for David Cassidy’s Diet; film of a performance of Fanogram, Cook doesn’t think this is "art". Levering up paving stones in Cook’s garden, while he is at a match, and replacing them with the clay squares. Cook is thrilled when sees the new paviours. He realises that she had been teasing him with the other work he saw. Voorsanger with the Blackpool team. The finished work.Roberts’s Crime of Passion (1996), Teenage Suicide (1996), Syringe (1996), and Strait-Jacket, Female (1995). Roberts drawing anatomical exhibits. She talks about her earlier works, such as Gynaecological Couch (1992), and Dentist’s Chair, C.19th (1992). A real gynaecological couch. Colin Begg, Barrie McKillop, and Ien Soun Ly, three junior doctors working in Glasgow, talk about their ideas of art. Roberts on her way to the doctors’ flat. The four meet. She shows them slides of her work, particularly the gynaecological couch picture, and describing the public reaction to it. Roberts takes the doctors round the Pathology Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh and describes her responses to the exhibits. Strait-Jacket, Male (1995), Crime of Passion (1996), Sigmund Freud’s Desk and Chair (1996), Teenage Suicide (1996). Roberts and the doctors at the Glasgow City Police Mortuary. Mortuary Slab (1993). The doctors talk about how they have to react to the death of patients. Roberts working in her studio. She describes some possible subjects for this work including lifesize anatomical models she saw in Vienna and Florence. She describes the different postures of the models, with the males generally intellectualised while the females are usually sexualised, and suggests that it would be good for the doctors to recognise that society treats men and women differently. She works on two different paintings at the same time in order to keep them related to each other. The doctors discuss what they might expect the new work to be. The paintings being delivered and unwrapped. Roberts titles the duo as Anatomical Marriage. The doctors talk about their reactions. Roberts points out that, though the female image comes from a wax model, the painting has started to being it alive. Credits.

Commentary Tim Marlow;
Title Music Aphex Twin.
With thanks to Sue Charnley, Blackpool F.C.,
Blackpool Terrazzo Co.
Photography Mike Jackson,
Philip Bonham-Carter,
Neville Kidd,
Steve Broadhurst;
Sound Simon Wilson,
Kenny Potter,
Jim Hunter;
Dubbing Mixer Steve Hudson;
On-Line Editor Phil Southby;
Unit Manager Erica Banks;
Production Assistants Emma Shakespeare,
Linda Dalling;
Graphic Design Christine Büttner;
Film Editors Stephen Parkinson,
Guy Crossman;
Research Emily Kennedy;
Executive Producer Arts Council of England
Rodney Wilson;
Director (Jessica Voorsanger) Tim Robinson;
Director (Julie Roberts) Kate Misrahi;
Series Editor Keith Alexander..
A BBC/Arts Council of England Co-Production.
© BBC MCMXCVII.