Art in Ruins

Art in Ruins Vampire Value 1988

Art in Ruins was formed in 1984 as a collaborative interventionist practice in art and architecture, staging exhibitions and publishing texts, by Hannah Vowles and Glyn Banks.[1][2][3]

History and practice

Art in Ruins, based in Bloomsbury, London, uses 1960s conceptual art strategies utilized by Art & Language and Gilbert and George.[3] Works include Trust Us (1997) and We Like You (1995).[3] Their reaction to current art is "iconoclastic"[4] with "a sort of supersensitivity to the politics of art."[5] They curated the exhibition "Our Wonderful Culture" (St George's Crypt, Bloomsbury 1995) and collaborated with Stewart Home, Ed Baxter, and others on "Ruins of Glamour, Glamour of Ruins" (Chisenhale Gallery 1986) [6] and "Desire in Ruins" (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow 1987).[7][8][9] Since the early 1990s, they have been satirising self-expression and focusing on art's economic basis.[10] Like General Idea and Group Material, Art in Ruins may be a group "but they are first and foremost a demolition squad whose target is the last vestiges of value........more than a name" Art in Ruins "is a whole programme."[11]

Art in Ruins Untitled 1991

Their work has been exhibited in major cities throughout Europe.[12][13][14] They have been Visiting Professors at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. In 1991 Art in Ruins were awarded the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm Stipendium. An exhibition concerning Third World Debt and migration entitled “Conceptual Debt” was shown at the DAAD Galerie Berlin [15] followed by the discursive event on art activism "trap" with Stephan Geene and Büro Bert at Kunst-Werke Berlin in 1993. [16][17]

Art in Ruins has been in limbo since 2001. This 'silence' is the subject of an artist's project[18][19] and it has also been the subject of two editions of "Wavelength" arts programme on Resonance FM.[20][21] Their website is at Art in Ruins and debt trap kunst praxis

Art in Ruins themselves have said "... it may be that it is our extremely visible failure to be indexed in the recent history of the dominant culture that is our greatest success."[22]

Notes and references

Art in Ruins My Homeland is not a Suitcase 1991
  1. Glyn Banks and Hannah Vowles (1987). New Realism: From the museum of ruined intentions. London: Gimpel Fils. OCLC 19809582.
  2. Watson, Gray (1986). Art in ruins. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts. ISBN 0-905263-06-5. OCLC 22669762.
  3. 1 2 3 Alex Coles. "Appearances are Against Us", Art and Text, Los Angeles, July 2000.
  4. Michael Corris. Artforum, New York, September 1991.
  5. Dave Beech. Art Monthly, London, July/August 1998.
  6. "Chisenhale Gallery Archive". chisenhale.org.uk/archive/.
  7. "Festival of Plagiarism".
  8. "Ruins of Glamour/Glamour of Ruins".
  9. "London Art Tripping: A Psychogeographical Excursion".
  10. Jonathan Jones. The Guardian, London, 15 December 1999.
  11. Frank Perrin. European Guerillas "Kanal" No 2, April/May 1992
  12. "Contemporary Utopias, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts, April/May 2001".
  13. "Krieg".
  14. "Radikale Bilder".
  15. Irit Rogoff (2000). Terra Infirma: Geography's Visual Culture. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09616-2. pp 56-60.
  16. Matthias Michalka, ed. (2015). to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer: Artistic Practices around 1990. Cologne: Walter Konig. ISBN 9783-86335-813-6.
  17. "Former West Research Seminar: Art and the Social - Exhibitions of Contemporary Art in the 1990s".
  18. Weinmayr, Eva. "Art in Ruins and Unknown Stranger, London 1994, an unpublished project for Frieze (Occasional Papers & FormContent, London)". Eva Weinmayr. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  19. "(pause) 21 scenes concerning the silence of Art in Ruins".
  20. "Destruction in Art part 8".
  21. "Ed Baxter on Art in Ruins".
  22. "Trust Us. Art in Ruins and Unknown Stranger, London 1994, an Unpublished Project for Frieze".

Further reading

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