in memory of and A Pot of History MYBA At the beginning of this small chapter, I was still in college, Thatcher was in full stride and the art scene in in the mid-1980s felt dull and not about radical ideas any more. Instead it felt centered on an awkward club of artists and institutions, who went about their ‘business as usual’. No one talked publicly about art, because it was embarrassing. To aspire to be an artist, or even to be interested in art was considered a waste of time. To have a job as an artist was a virtual impossibility. A fine art voca- tion in the UK was not an option. You got the impression from your tutors’ view of the world that if, after years of art school (which in those days you even got a grant for), you managed to survive for five years making art (perhaps on the dole), you might just get a chance to exhibit it, in a real gallery. Malcolm McLaren summed it up:

“At art schools, they trained everybody for failure!”

London had been for a decade, creatively, much more about music and advertising, which was where the more ambitious art students had been ending up after art school. However, in such stagnant ponds, interesting stuff happens. Some of my fellow art students, encouraged by more radical teachers and each other, were getting stuck into various Marxist writings: the Frankfurt School, with its critique of cultural mass production; Semiotext(e) were publishing books that highlighted the simulacrum and the way that the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ (Guy Debord, 1967) had engulfed the world so completely that now only the meagre shadow of reality was visible. The Postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida and the social anthropology of Michel Foucault was starting to bleed into the way art was being discussed and developed. All this cutting-edge, critical theory that in today’s world — of fake news, social media, manipulating populists, reality TV stars and journalists (as leaders of the free world), as well as a terrifying background of ecological breakdown­ — seems fright- eningly prescient. But at the time we all felt we were discovering the pattern of DNA. In the wider arena, Fine Art courses were beginning to be restruc- tured and the restrictive divisions of painting, sculpture, printmaking and ‘New Media’ were being broken down. This in turn helped to free up thinking and flattened the restrictive hierarchies of class, race and gender and gave confidence to a growing band of outsiders and iconoclasts. Set against a backdrop of increased cooperation in Europe — with discussions around the Euro currency and the Maastricht treaty — European countries were starting to look inwards in a different way and search for their own specific cultural identities. The was instigated in 1984, but it wasn’t until the early 90s that and younger artists on the list made it commercially viable and it gained public attention. These activities paved the way for later developments, including Modern’s conception in 1994 which, when it opened at the turn of the millennium, ushered in London as the epicenter of global art. Meanwhile the financial instability, recessions and high unem- ployment of the mid-80s had put many businesses into bankruptcy. So we were also getting on with the practical stuff of creating exhibitions for ourselves. There were lots of empty buildings where property developers, encouraged by a wave of active young artists, began to see an opportu- nity, with little investment, to bring the spaces alive with art exhibitions. Warehouses in dilapidated, shell and semi-furnished states were buzzing again. The developers gave keys to groups of artists who just wanted to see their work in a public context with the raw concrete of a warehouse or polished floorboards of an empty shop. Beer sponsors were found and brought on board; private view cards and mailing lists connected everything up and created a new way of thriving as young artists. Later, in Docklands and Bermondsey, the seminal warehouse shows , Modern Medicine and Gambler would prove to be career-launching vehicles for not just and other of our contemporaries, but also for advertising mogul and his transformative entry into collecting contemporary British art. The complexity of adver- tising making art and art making advertising has been an issue for our generation. Modern Art had fractured and given birth to a new movement of , which was swimming in a global conversation, finding new markets to sell, show and celebrate equality and difference. London attracted young gallerists from abroad who knew about contemporary art. Karsten Schubert — a German dealer, who arrived from the burgeoning art scene of Cologne, learnt his trade at the and opened a new gallery in Fitzrovia — knew being an artist was a profession and being young was an asset rather than a problem. Artists who I knew were already working and exhibiting there while I was still at college. Another gallery (ironically first known as Interim Art) was conceived in Beck Road, East London by its owner the American-born art school graduate , before being moved to the West End. She employed more artists I knew to paint the walls white in her terraced which was the gallery venue. She knew the value of art made by young people and was full of the energy of New York, which had a buoyant market and was overflowing with art and artists at this time. Then there was also a tiny but influential white-box space in Foley Street, set up by Laure Genillard (who came from Switzerland). The London art world was learning how to be international. This started to attract the attention of a new wave of establish- ment characters such as , who at that time was funding and producing exhibitions from his house in Brixton, including my first solo exhibition in Denmark Street, which opened about the same time as the first of his many galleries­ — in Duke Street, St James. The fresh art school leavers, even some still studying, were on a roll. There were also new collectors, people to write about the art, critics and philosophers and new art magazines, including the influential interna- tional publication Frieze, whose owners went on to set up in a tent in Regent’s Park. In practice the whole scene quickly became self-perpetuating. In some ways it felt like there was space for all and yet I am sure in hindsight it all must have seemed hermetically sealed to many of our peers. Angus Fairhurst made a memorable work in 1991 which captured this moment in history — when we could question culture and society as a playful punkish gesture, before the stakes got so high that we now find ourselves fighting for life on the planet. The work, Gallery Connections, was literally just that. The transcript of this performance artwork was published in the first issue of Frieze magazine and much later a desk (with what appears as the recording device), was bought and shown at the Tate. The work is a series of simultaneous phone calls made to galleries, who are then hooked together, so the person answering the call is accused by the other of calling them. As the work progresses, more and more galleries are picking up the phone to each other — the activity seems to suggest that some special phenomena has spread like a virus throughout the gallery network; indeed, maybe they are being investigated by the Inland Revenue(!).

Gavin Turk 2019 I was studying in the RCA sculpture department, where Jake Chapman was taking his MA. He was frustrated with the course and so started taking the Goldsmiths MA at the same time. His elder brother Dinos was at the time working under his Christian name Constantinos in the painting department at the RCA. They started to work together after college in a crusade against individualism. One of the early works that I saw of theirs was a wall work in a space in Hoxton Square (later the Lux cinema) — Richard Long meets Art & Language via psychedelia and a dirty protest.

1. We Are Artists 1991 Mud wall painting dimensions variable

© Jake and Dinos Chapman Courtesy the artists

All too often when I work into the night I think I’m making great steps forward. However when I wake up in the morning, there’s a reality check as I realise that things aren’t quite what they seemed, only hours ago. This work is from a portfolio called London made in 1992 and exhibited at Karsten Schubert Gallery that year. Angus was always moved to repeat, change and repeat stuff so that the sense of things pulsated and got modified.

(The guy in the picture is not actually Angus but a man, I think called Shaun, who I remember turning up several years later at a Critical Décor opening in Golden Square and having a contretemps with Jake outside the pub.)

2. Angus Fairhurst When I woke up the feeling was still there 1992 Screen print 875 × 660 mm

© Angus Fairhurst Estate Courtesy Private Collection Photo: James Pfaff

I went to the exhibition in 1989 and saw two medicine cabinets there. They seemed refresh- ingly different to most of the work in the show. There was a simplicity to these glass-fronted cabinets which confounded me in that they were neither medical nor museum cases, but oscillated between. Being just something aesthetic to look at wonderfully challenged the authority of the medicines; the reductive, objective packaging was now full of subjective questions and speculation.

3. Damien Hirst Problems (1989) Glass, faced particleboard, koto, wooden dowels, plastic, aluminium and pharmaceutical packaging 138 × 102 × 23 cm

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2019 Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates

One of the first times I met Gary was with my friend . Gary was being photographed wearing some sliced white bread smothered in jam which was mask- ing-taped to his ankles. The resulting photograph was of course called Jammy Boots. As I remember, it was about the same time as he was photographed in the bath as King Cnut. This artwork, like the performances, demonstrates Gary’s special brand of black humour. It is a painting blending symbolism, abstraction and the everyday: the commonplace. Once seen, the painting leaves a lasting impression.

4. Tony Blackburn 1993 Gloss and matt paint on panel 193 × 137 cm

© Gary Hume Courtesy Private Collection

I went to a warehouse in Bermondsey to see the latest in a series of shows in a space known as Building 1. The huge space was empty of people except a lone figure who crossed the floor and I remember him introducing himself to me as . I think there must have been a misun- derstanding somewhere, as this was, I later found out, not Michael Landy, but . The space was full up with what looked like hundreds of different configurations of red oxide market stall frames, covered with artificial grass, with stacks of bread crates beside them. There were also videos of shopkeepers putting up their stalls in front of their shops, using the crates and the grass. The show was called Market. In 1966 Carl Andre made a series of brick configu- ration pieces called Equivalent I–VIII. This installation by Michael reminded me of that publicly controversial artwork, but with a contemporary reference to consumerism.

5. Michael Landy Stack VII 1990 24 bread crates, trolley 226 × 66 × 56 cm

© Michael Landy Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery Photo: Ben Westoby

In Yves Klein’s Anthropometry paintings of the early 60s, the artist literally painted on models and then used them to print with. Here, a chair seat becomes a printing pad — a strangely suggestive office element that makes the missing audience’s seat into the picture. The ultramarine print-painting machine rubber-stamps the authenticity of the work.

Abigail loves a visual pun and at the 1995 Live Stock Market (a street market for artists) she produced Lead by the Nose — lead noses, sold in the market’s separate currency, the Bull.

6. Blueprint 1992 Chair with felt pad seat, blue ink, framed print 122 × 76 × 94 cm

© Abigail Lane All rights reserved, DACS/Armitage 2019 Courtesy Glenn Scott Wright Collection Photo: Susan Ormerod Making History, Karsten Schubert Gallery, London, 1992

I wanted to show Two fried eggs and a kebab at it was when I saw this striking work at Alternative Arts in the West End that I first met Sarah. We got excited about the figurative possibility of furniture and talked about making a show of art-furniture.

I first saw this bike sculpture in her solo show at in 1992. It is a sculptural collage of an inverted bicycle displaying photographs of a male torso holding fruit, flowers and vegetables against and instead of his genitals. Like all her work it is a complicated mix of homemade and confident, macho and vulnerable.

7. Still Life 1992 Bicycle, photographs, wood, card 92 × 160 × 62 cm

© Sarah Lucas Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London Private Collection

Tim and Sue weren’t originally part of any group — they were a group unto themselves, pasting up posters of the two of them as a détourned version of Gilbert and George. They travelled around in a beautiful old red oxide VW camper van, the engine of which had been previously detached from the vehicle and placed on a table for part of Tim’s 1993 degree show.

8. Tim Noble and Sue Webster The Simple Solution 1994 LIthographic print 594 × 420 mm

© Tim Noble and Sue Webster Courtesy the artists

I was at Chelsea School of Art when Jane was there studying sculpture and I remember her making a large, fantastical, interconnected structure from concrete and copper plumbing pipes. In hindsight it all makes so much sense as she went on to plumb freezer units onto both household and frozen forms. The act of casting and freezing is echoed in the double rubber casting of these sensual ice cream scoops.

9. Jane Simpson Fondant Fancy 1992 Silicon rubber 35 × 25 mm

© Jane Simpson Courtesy Neville Shulman Collection

This was my first signature-based work, devised when I was still at college. I wanted to make a painting which questioned its own value with a combination of self-consciousness and humility. I explained the construction process on a small label, hand-sewn in the bottom right corner. The work was entirely made from recycled materials. It employed a medi- eval string-and-peg process (using spent matches) to stretch the canvas to avoid metal staples. A tree was planted to IMAGE #1 replace the recycled timber. In essence, the piece took little from the world, except my own labour.

10. Title 1990 Pigment on canvas 183 × 274 cm

© Gavin Turk Courtesy Shane Akeroyd Collection IMAGE #1 This is a bronze cast of a vacated, crumpled nylon sleeping bag, painted to look real. It portrays something that might be uncomfortable to look at outside of the gallery. It could alternatively look like a canvas that has fallen off the wall. By contemplating the artwork the audience is implicated in the outsider status of its absent owner; the art lover indeed becomes the owner of the grubby property with its political IMAGE #1 significance.

11. Habitat Gavin Turk 2004 Painted bronze 7 × 70 × 170 cm

© Gavin Turk Courtesy the artist IMAGE #1 Rachel casts phenomenological spaces: the space under a table, the space under a chair or a bath — structuring a limit to the limitless air. Such work seems somehow anti-figura- tive, more blocking in than opening out.

This work is a bit different. She made a series of works by casting the interior of hot-water bottles; by removing the rubber jacket, the plaster forms has left are both revealing and figurative (hence the titleTorso ). They remind me of the way that human-shaped holes in the ground of the Pompeii archeological site were found and filled with plaster to reveal lost human forms.

12. Untitled (Torso) 1993 Rubber 7 × 18 × 26 cm

© Rachel Whiteread Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Courtesy Private collection

thanks to

Philly Adams Shane Akeroyd Jake and Dinos Chapman Angus Fairhurst Gee Greenslade Damien Hirst Gary Hume Anika Jamieson-Cook Michael Landy Abigail Lane Sarah Lucas Katherine Nisbet Tim Noble and Sue Webster Francis Outred Hannah Radford Robert Sandelson Neville Shulman Jane Simpson Glenn Scott Wright Rachel Whiteread

Sadie Coles HQ, London Thomas Dane Gallery

special thanks to

The British Art Fair The Deborah Curtis Anastasia Albertine Sakoilska Designed by Tim Barnes herechickychicky.com