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.
[ Alex Coles. ''Appearances are Against Us'', Art and Text, Los Angeles, July 2000.]
History and practice
Art in Ruins based in
Bloomsbury,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, uses 1960s conceptual art strategies utilized by
Art & Language and
Gilbert and George
Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943 in San Martin de Tor, Italy), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942 in Plymouth, United Kingdom), are two artists who work together as the collaborative art d ...
.
[ Works include ''Trust Us'' (1997) and ''We Like You'' (1995).][ Their reaction to current art is ''"iconoclastic"'' with ''"a sort of supersensitivity to the politics of art."'' They curated the exhibition ''Our Wonderful Culture'' (St George's Crypt, Bloomsbury 1995) and collaborated with ]Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), an ...
, Ed Baxter, and others on ''Ruins of Glamour, Glamour of Ruins'' ( Chisenhale Gallery 1986) and ''Desire in Ruins'' (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow 1987).
Since the early 1990s, Art in Ruins have been satirising self-expression and focusing on art's economic basis. Like General Idea
General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994.
As pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated ac ...
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."[ Frank Perrin. ''European Guerillas.'' Kanal No 2, April/May 1992]
Their work has been exhibited in major cities throughout Europe. They have been Visiting Professors at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (german: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, also known as Munich Academy) is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria, ...
. In 1991, Art in Ruins were awarded the DAAD Künstlerprogramm Berlin Stipendium. An exhibition concerning Third World Debt and migration entitled ''Conceptual Debt'' was shown at the DAAD Galerie Berlin[ pp 56-60.] followed by the discursive event on art activism "trap" with Stephan Geene and Büro Bert at Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art
The KW Institute for Contemporary Art (also known as Kunst-Werke) is a contemporary art institution located in Auguststraße 69 in Berlin-Mitte, Germany. Klaus Biesenbach was the founding director of KW; the current director is Krist Gruijthuijs ...
Berlin in 1993.Resonance FM
Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station specialising in the arts run by the London Musicians' Collective (LMC). The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and ...
. Their website is a
Art in Ruins
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."
Notes and references
Further reading
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* Article commissioned by Matthew Slotover
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External links
Art in Ruins
{{DEFAULTSORT:Art in Ruins
British conceptual artists
British contemporary artists
British artist groups and collectives