''Documents Series'' is the overall title of a series of eighty-three fine artworks made collaboratively by

Henry Bond Henry Bond, FHEA (born 13 June 1966) is an English writer, photographer, and visual artist. In his ''Lacan at the Scene'' (2009), Bond made contributions to theoretical psychoanalysis and forensics. In 1990, with Sarah Lucas, Bond organised ...

and

Liam Gillick Liam Gillick (born 1964, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) is a British artist who lives and works in New York City.

between 1990 and 1995. It has been suggested that the intention behind the work was to "examine the procedures behind news-gathering."

Praxis

In order to make the work the duo posed as a news reporting team—i.e., a photographer and a journalist—often attending events scheduled in the Press Association's

Gazette A gazette is an official journal, a newspaper of record, or simply a newspaper. In English and French speaking countries, newspaper publishers have applied the name ''Gazette'' since the 17th century; today, numerous weekly and daily newspaper ...

—a list of potentially newsworthy events in London. Bond worked as if a typical photojournalist, joining the other press photographers present; whilst Gillick operated as the journalist, first collecting the ubiquitous

press kit A press kit, often referred to as a media kit in business environments, is a pre-packaged set of promotional materials that provide information about a person, company, organization or cause and which is distributed to members of the media for pr ...

before preparing his audio recording device.

Format

Each work in the group takes the form of a framed photographic print and a corresponding text panel which includes the time, date, and location of the event, together with a brief description and, in some instances, an extract of the audio recording made at each event by Gillick.

Critical reception

The series was first shown commercially in 1991, at Karsten Schubert Limited and then, in 1992, at Maureen Paley's

Interim Art Maureen Paley (born 1953Sleeman, Elizabeth (ed.) ''The International Who's Who of Women'' (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 431. Entry on Paley available as snippet viehere/ref>) is the American owner of a contemporary art gallery in Be ...

—two of the galleries that were pioneering the development of the YBA art movement. Writing in 2001, whilst a curator at

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, Emma Dexter stated, "Henry Bond and Liam Gillick posed as journalists at press and media events, creating as a result a series of photo/text works that are a neat elision of two distinct realms of information gathering and sorting: that of conceptual art and that of the news and publicity industry, ''Documents'' exposes the codes and rituals involved in news management, but it has also become, with time, an accidental history of our age."Emma Dexter, "London 1990-2001." In, Iwona Blazwick (ed.) ''Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis'' (London: Tate, 2001), p. 84. Snippet view available o
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Examples of the series are held in the

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and have been exhibited at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, London (Century City, 2001) and

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the R ...

, London (How to Improve the World, 2006). The complete series were showcased at the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

(Brilliant! New Art from London) in 1995.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Documents Series British contemporary works of art Young British Artists