Brilliant! New Art from London, Walker Art Center, 1995–96

Abstract

There can be little doubt that the accepted origins of the Young British Artists (YBAs) began with Freeze, the exhibition organized by Damian Hirst in 1988. It was packed with graduates of Goldsmiths College where the artist and educator Michael Craig-Martin had recently revamped the curriculum to allow students to choose from a buffet of courses, rather than using the prix fixe menu. Hirst turned out to be a natural entrepreneur and guided his fellow Goldsmiths’ graduates into the public eye well before the traditional art world machinations would have allowed. After Freeze came Modern Medicine, spearheaded by Hirst, Carl Freedman, and Billee Sellman, and East Country Yard Show, devised by Sarah Lucas and Henry Bond, both in 1990. A year later, the Serpentine Gallery endorsed what was beginning to feel something like a movement in its Broken English exhibition, overseen by Hirst.

Keywords

• inos Chapman
• Richard Flood
• Sam Taylor-Wood
• Jake Chapman
• Dinos Chapman
• Michael Landy
• Sarah Lucas
• Damien Hirst
• British art
• sculpture