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Soon after beginning to work together Iain & Jane began experimenting with a borrowed video camera. Acknowledging their limited technical abilities and their growing interest in performance, their earliest video works are invariably a single person carrying out a single action, shot in a single take with a static camera. One of the first video works they made together was made during their final year at Goldsmiths - The The Jesus and Mary Chain. The piece was presented as a life-size video projection of Iain, sat on the floor. In between smoking and playing excerpts of music on the cassette player on the floor next to him, Iain recounts a (true) story of performing as a teenager at a school concert under the pretence of being The Jesus and Mary Chain. The monologue describes in detail how the arrival of a new 'trendy' music teacher had prompted the concert, and the recent break-up of Iain's school-boy band had led to his hasty submission of a tape recording of The Jesus and Mary Chain to the new music master. Unexpectedly chosen to headline the evening, Iain then hastily assembled a group of friends to play-out the role of the Jesus and Mary Chain at the concert. Suddenly panicked by the legal consequences of this 'passing off', the bass players' mother (a legal secretary) suggested making a slight ammendment. The posters were quickly altered to feature an extra 'The' before being photocopied and flyposted all over Canterbury by three over-eager school boys. The performance was (of course) disastrous, the plug was pulled and Iain was physically attacked by local university students who had, perhaps unwisely, expected to see the 'real' Jesus and Mary Chain play at the local school hall. Iain & Jane were disappointed with the sound and picture quality, but enjoyed the rambling free-form narrative of the piece. Given the opportunity to represent the work in a group exhibition at Tramway in Glasgow, Iain & Jane elected to re-make it. This new version of the piece followed a similar format to the original and was titled Stoned & Dethroned - The The Jesus and Mary Chain.
The The Jesus and Mary
Chain Version 1 first exhibited in Goldsmiths BA Degree Show at Goldsmiths College in London, UK during June - July 1995. Version 2 first exhibited in Host at Tramway in Glasgow during April - May 1998
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