Tamara Krikorian

b. (1944-2009)

Tamara Krikorian was an influential artist during the 1970s and one of the first female artists in the UK to work with video. She made a number of key video works, in particular Vanitas, and Breeze. Krikorian also instigated collaborative shows of artists’ work, video conferences and various art forums, and importantly published a number of texts.


“Krikorian's work was complex in its layering of meanings, and lyrical, often exploring the blurred edges between representation and the real; the static and the moving, and her ambient electronic installations explored technological landscapes as well as the recorded images of landscape.' - J.Hatfield

Tamara Krikorian (1944-2009) is mentioned in the same breath as Yoko Ono, Derek Jarman and Sally Potter amongst many others. Her generation created a context for contemporary artists such as Steve McQueen, Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing. Tamara studied music and began making video in 1973 in Scotland. Through a series of influential exhibitions her campaigning led to video as art form being legitimised in the latter part of the 1970s. She taught in Maidstone and Newcastle and co-founded London Video Arts, before settling in Wales, where her commitment to allowing artists to have a voice made her much beloved by those who worked with her.

During her time at LVA she instigated collaborative shows of artists' work including the first exhibition of video in Scotland, 'Video Towards Defining an Aesthetic', at the Third Eye, Glasgow in 1976. During the latter part of her life spent Tamara was a leading light in the visual arts world in Wales. She is best known for her championing of artists' practice whilst director of, first the Welsh Sculpture Trust and then Cywaith Cymru . Artworks Wales, the national organisation for public art in Wales. She was instrumental in the development of the careers of some of Wales's most exciting and interesting artists, offering them the support to take risks and multiple platforms and fora to show their work that went far beyond the traditional model of a public art agency.

The artist was in the following exhibitions:
Unassembed Information: Towards an archive
Portmanteau