Latest Crop of British Artists

Exhibition Brings Latest Crop of British Artists

``Red Studies: Jon, Eva, Molly, Amit, Tony, Helen,'' by Dryden Goodwin

/ Courtesy of organizers

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

For the longest time, the so-called Young British Artists (YBA), led by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume, defined British contemporary art. They shocked the art world with their provocative art works and wild antics that attracted widespread media attention.

Today's crop of British contemporary artists are no less talented than the YBAs, but they seem to be much more low-key.

British artists Dryden Goodwin and Nathaniel Rackowe talked to The Korea Times last week about their own art works, as well as the influence of the YBAs on their generation of artists. They were in Seoul for the opening of the ``London Calling: Who Gets to Run the World'' exhibition at the Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Pyeongchang-dong,

Goodwin and Rackowe were both young students when the YBAs made their mark in the art scene in the 1990s.

``For our generation of artists, those YBAs were huge. They opened things up but at the same time, when I was in art school, among the artists, there was almost a certain reaction against what the YBAs were doing. We wanted to sort of differentiate ourselves in a way. But the YBAs have really opened it up. The YBAs were already in a sort of post-modern art world. But I think the idea of post-modernism became even much more broader because of them,'' Rackowe said.

The YBAs made it possible for contemporary art to be discussed in the mainstream culture, but there was also a downside.

``The way the art works were communicated and distilled in the newspapers were very `sound-bite-y.' The kind of complexity of the works was boiled down into these raw sensationalized elements, which was part of the strategy of the artists. So the artists worked with that. For me, that aspect didn't come from a process, but from self-consciousness,'' Goodwin said.

Both artists are aware of the pressure to live up to the YBAs, but it doesn't mean that they are interested in shocking the public.

``I worry the wider public will think contemporary art has to be all about shock value. Actually things have moved on so far. … I don't know any artists who are interested in shocking people anymore. You're in the studio and you're not thinking about that kind of stuff, you think about what's important for you and how to make it into art,'' Rackowe said.

For the exhibition in Seoul, Rackowe is showing several installation pieces that combine light and structure, such as ``Black Shed'' and ``LP 19.''

For Black Shed, Rackowe ordered a shed kit from an online store, cut the wooden pieces into strips, painted it black on the outside and yellow on the inside. Then he placed lights on the inside, which creates lines of light inside the room.

``I'm interested in how we locate ourselves as humans in these crazy cities that we build around us and so I'm always trying to figure out how I exist amid all of this structural mass. So the materials I use, it's important to use the stuff that are used to surround us, the kind of regular materials, stuff that isn't really designed. I take those objects, combine and deconstruct them a bit, and try to trace the situation where as a viewer, you're forced to reconsider your surroundings,'' Rackowe said.

On the other hand, Goodwin's art combines drawing, photography, and film. ``Red Studies'' features delicate portraits of his friends and family that are based on photographs, while ``Searching Damien'' is a series of portraits of his brother, which are also animated in a small video iPod.

``I'm interested in the nature of portraiture and how to make time explicit part of the experience of a piece of work. … With portraits for family and friends, you already have a relationship with them but through the activity of drawing, it provides a duration of time to think about a person,'' Goodwin said.

The ``London Calling'' exhibition hoped to introduce the best of the current generation of British artists to the Korean audience.

``We wanted to cover the different media and, of course, get the most important and most talked about artists at this moment in London,'' said Eunice Eunbok Yu, director for London-based I-MYU Projects, which organized the exhibition.

Other participating artists include Philip Allen, Fiona Banner, David Batchelor, Martin Creed, Peter McDonald and Gary Webb. Incidentally, the title of the exhibition is taken from the song by British punk rockers The Clash.

To get to the museum, get off Gwanghwamun Station Line 3, Exit 3. Take the 1020 or 1711 green bus, and get off at Lotte-Samsung Apartment stop. Visit www.totalmuseum.com or call (02) 379-7037.

cathy@koreatimes.co.kr