Art & Language is a group
of conceptual artists who
have produced collaborative
work under this name since
the late 1960s.
The name Art & Language
was first used in 1968 by
the British artists Terry
Atkinson, David Bainbridge,
Michael Baldwin and Harold
Hurrell, who had been collaborating
on works since around 1966,
and who were at that time
teaching art in Coventry.
Their early work, as well
as their journal Art-Language
which first appeared in 1969,
is regarded as an important
influence on much conceptual
art both in the United Kingdom
and in the United States.
In the early 1970s Ian Burn,
Michael Corris, Charles Harrison,
Preston Heller, Graham Howard,
Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard,
Mel Ramsden, Terry Smith and
from Coventry Philip Pilkington
and David Rushton joined the
group and worked under its
name. Art & Language produced
a good deal of art as well
as theoretical writings, though
by the end of the 1970s the
group was essentially reduced
to Baldwin, Harrison and Ramsden
as the political analysis
that developed within the
group resulted in many members
leaving to work in more activist
political occupations. Ian
Burn and Terry Smith returned
to Australia where they joined
forces with Ian Milliss, a
conceptual artist who had
begun working with trade unions
in the early 1970s, to set
up Union Media Services, a
design studio specialising
in social marketing and community
and trade union based art
initiatives. Karl Beveridge
and Carol Conde who had been
peripheral members in New
York, returned to Canada where
they also began to work with
trade unions and community
groups. Other UK members drifted
off into a variety of creative,
academic and sometimes "politicised"
occupations.
The Art & Language group
that exhibited in the international
Documenta exhibitions of 1972
included Atkinson, Bainbridge,
Baldwin, Hurrell, Pilkington
and Rushton and the then America
editor of Art-Language Joseph
Kosuth. In 1986, the remnants
of the group were nominated
for the Turner Prize.
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