It’s Frieze time, when the art world gathers in Regents Park to spend millions on art and gawk at those doing so, but it’s also 20 years since Freeze, the group show that launched the Young British Artists. It makes you feel so old.
PEARCE & RAMSEY: BEST IN SHOW John Jones Project Space 3.10.08-31.10.08 - words : Josh Spero
But bringing back my youth is a show of graduate work curated by Naomi Pearce and Gavin Ramsey, who met at Goldsmiths, whence Damien Hirst and the other YBAs. Pearce and Ramsey have pedigree, you might say.
Joanne Smither’s Horse is a mixed media piece playing with forms and representation. A table with its sides folded down has a TV on top set to one side displaying a horse’s head; the TV cord is the tail. It’s imaginative, funny and raises the important question about quite how we consider objects and their shapes. The second generation of YBAs, or something completely different? Head to Finsbury Park to make your mind up.
whos-jack.co.uk // 59
‘Humorous, process obsessed and provocative’ is their mantra, and the art bears this out. Liam Richardson’s witty Heat is an electric fire with a neon sign saying ‘Heat’ instead of any bars, and a model of a rural landscape above it. (Tracey Emin, an uber-YBA brought back neon in a big way.)