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Text-Based Conceptual Art Practice in Britain

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Discursive Sites: Text-Based Conceptual Art Practice in Britain Louisa Lee PhD University of York History of Art September 2018 Abstract Focusing on the period from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, this thesis traces the changing sites and trajectories of text-based conceptual art and artists’ publications in Britain. Taking as its case studies various magazines, exhibitions and art schools including Art-Language by the group Art & Language, Control magazine by artist Stephen Willats and the Ealing Groundcourse at Ealing College of Art, I demonstrate how artists adopted text, language and publications in order to question paradigms of viewing and display. Although the term ‘conceptual art’ is now unanimous with art which eschewed traditional forms of art production such as painting and sculpture, its definition and dates are unclear and frequently contested. As such, I explore how the sites of artists’ magazines, exhibitions and art schools, and their overlapping territories, can map generational networks and influences of text-based conceptual art practice in Britain. This thesis attempts to avoid a retroactive linear reading and instead understands the 1960s and 1970s as linked by questioning the role of the artist as well as their value in a wider society. Bringing together published and archival material to explore the importance and relevance of using both exhibition histories and pedagogical practice in its analysis, I argue that exhibitions, both then and now, framed the dissemination and reception of this practice. In addition to this, art schools and art school magazines acted as platforms for discourse between students and teachers as well as a a broader generational dialogue and the dissemination of ideas. In exploring text-based conceptual practice, I therefore align it to its social and political context demonstrating that the relationship between the 1960s and 1970s was based on a shared institutional and ontological enquiry into the dominant frameworks and networks of art. 2 Contents Abstract _____________________________________________________________ 2 Contents _____________________________________________________________ 3 List of illustrations____________________________________________________ 6 Acknowledgements____________________________________________________13 Declaration __________________________________________________________ 14 Introduction _________________________________________________________ 15 National and International Conceptual Art Exhibitions _________________________ 31 Art & Language, Art-Language and the Verbal Impulse __________________________ 40 Chapter Breakdown _____________________________________________________46 1. Reception. Public and Private Dialogues: Producing and Exhibiting Text- based Art in and around 1972 and the move to Research-based Practice Introduction _____________________________________________________ 49 The New Art at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1972_______________________51 A Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain at Gallery House, London, 1972__________ 59 The British Avant-Garde at the New York Cultural Center, New York, 1971_____ 64 Exhibiting Collective Dialogue: Art & Language’s Indexing Projects _________ 68 The Filing Cabinet as Conceptual Display Unit __________________________75 Inclusion in/and Exclusion from the International Network __________________83 Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document, 1973-1979 ___________________________106 Summary__________________________________________________ 110 2. Dissemination. Between Looking and Reading: Exhibiting Text-Based Conceptual Art Introduction ______________________________________________________ 111 Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979 at Tate Britain __________________________114 3 Looking at Art-Language ______________________________________________123 Dialectical Materialism_________________________________________________133 The Art-Language facsimile boxset, 2000 _________________________________ 136 Summary _________________________________________________________140 3. Production. Experiment and the Verbal Impulse in Art Education: The Genealogies of Conceptual Art Practice through Pedagogical Dissemination Introduction _______________________________________________________142 Changing Policies of Art Education_____________________________________ 146 The Ealing Groundcourse_____________________________________________150 Control magazine_____________________________________________________159 The Verbal Impulse: The Advanced Sculpture Course at St Martin’s College of Art and the Group Crit 167 Silâns ______________________________________________________________173 The ‘Art Theory’ course at Coventry College of Art and Art-Language magazine ___181 Summary __________________________________________________________189 4. The Art School Magazine as Network: SCHOOL, Ostrich, Ratcatcher, Issue and ‘The Newport Group’ Introduction ________________________________________________________191 Studio International and Richard Cork _____________________________________193 SCHOOL__________________________________________________________197 The Newport Group__________________________________________________208 Issue_______________________________________________________________ 216 Ratcatcher ___________________________________________________________218 Ostrich _____________________________________________________________ 221 4 Summary _________________________________________________________224 Conclusion _______________________________________________________226 Bibliography _____________________________________________________ 235 Illustrations ______________________________________________________253 5 List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Figure 1: Installation photograph of Richard Long, Three Circles of Stones, 1972, stones. Installed at The New Art, The Hayward Gallery, London, 1972. Figure 2: Installation photograph of Barry Flanagan, Hayward II, Lengths of wood the same lengths as the ropes in Hayward I, scaffolding, stuffed-cloth columns and a wall covered in a reflective and distorting mirror foil, 1972. Installed at The New Art, The Hayward Gallery, London, 1972. Figure 3: Installation photograph of Keith Arnatt, An Institutional Fact, photographs, 1972. Installed at The New Art, The Hayward Gallery, London, 1972 Figure 4: Photograph of the outside Gallery House at the Goethe Institute, London, 1973 Taken from uncatalogued material, Tate Archives, London, TGA 201714 Blandy, Box 2 F2. Photograph by Reza Modjabi. Figure 5: Gustav Metzger, Mass Media: Today and Yesterday, 1972, Gallery House at the Goethe Institute, London, 1973. Taken from uncatalogued material, Tate Archives, TGA 201714 Blandy, Box 2 F2. Photographer unknown. Figure 6: Gustav Metzger, Mass Media: Today and Yesterday 1972/2017. Installation photograph from This Way Out of England: Gallery House in Retrospect at Raven Row Gallery, London, 2017. Photograph by Mark Blower. Figure 7: Robert Filliou, Up and Down Territory of the Genial Republic, 1972. Installation photograph from This Way Out of England: Gallery House in Retrospect at Raven Row Gallery, London, 2017. Photograph by Mark Blower. Figure 8: Displays of material from the Centre for Behavioural Art, including two image panels from A Survey of Attitudes Towards the Role of Art and the Artist, and two photographs taken of displays at the Centre c. 1972. Installation photograph of This Way Out of England: Gallery House in Retrospect, Raven Row, London, 2017. Photograph by Mark Blower. Figure 9: Ed Herring, D.A.R.N., 1972. Installation photograph of This Way Out of England: Gallery House in Retrospect, Raven Row, London, 2017. Photograph by Marcus J. Leith. Figure 10: Installation view of The British Avant Garde at the New Cultural Center, 1971. Showing Barry Flanagan, no. 1.71, 1971; fpre su, 1965; 4 casb 2’ 67, ringl ’67, rope (gr2sp 60) 6 ’67, 1967. Bruce McLean drawings. Taken from the Charles Harrison papers, TGA 200868 in the Tate Archives, London, 1971. Photographer unknown. Figure 11: Cover image, Studio International 181, no. 933 (May 1971) Figure 12: Photographer unknown, installation view of The British Avant Garde at the New Cultural Center, 1971. Taken from the Charles Harrison papers, TGA 200868 in the Tate Archives. Figure 13: Jef Kounellis (dir.), Documenta 5, 1972, 2005. Screenshot from film taken by author. Figure 14: Jef Kounellis (dir.), Documenta 5, 1972, 2005. Screenshot from film taken by author. 6 Figure 15: Jef Kounellis (dir.), Documenta 5, 1972, 2005. Screenshot from film taken by author. Figure 16: Photograph taken by the author, Art & Language, Index 02 installed at Time Extended / 1964- 1978, Herbert Foundation, Ghent, 2017 Figure 17: Installation photograph of Art & Language, Index 02 in The New Art, The Hayward Gallery, 1972. Courtesy of the Arts Council Archives, London. Photographer unknown. Figure 18: Installation photograph of Art & Language, Index 02 in The New Art, The Hayward Gallery, 1972. Courtesy of the Arts Council Archives, London. Photographer unknown. Figure 19: Cover image of The Fox, no. 2, 1975. Photograph by author. Figure 20: Cover image of The Equal Pay Report, 1970. Photograph by author. Figure 21: Installation photograph of Margaret Harrison, Mary Kelly and Kay Fido Hunt, Women & Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry (1973-75) at the South London Gallery, 1976, from the Southwark Council Archives. Figure 22: Installation photograph of Margaret Harrison, Mary Kelly and Kay Fido Hunt, Women & Work: A Document
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