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Total economy : the Artist Placement Group (1969-1976)

University of British Columbia

This dissertation examines the Artist Placement Group’s (APG) artist placements within industry and government in the U.K. and Western Europe from 1969-1976 and brings to light correspondence letters, corporate contracts, proposals and artist statements that have not been previously published. I consider the APG’s placements as prototypes that sought to juxtapose and critically question what they perceived as artificial divisions within society. These included art versus society, left versus right political affiliations, the working class versus management, perceptions of use versus uselessness in capitalist production and the organization versus the individual. I specifically examine Garth Evans’s placement with the British Steel Corporation (1968), Stuart Brisley’s placement with Hille & Co (1971), John Latham’s placement with the Scottish Office (1974) and the APG group exhibition titled, inn7o: Art and Economics (1972). These case studies form chapters that investigate the specific socio-political conditions of each placement’s organization, artist and the artwork produced under the umbrella of the APG mission. I adopt a localized social art history approach that considers these placements within the divisions of the British Marxist Left and the changes in the U.K.’s economic and labor policy that occurred against a backdrop of paradigm shifting events, such as the U.K.’s acceptance into the EEC (the predecessor to the EU). Within this politically sensitive and complex context, I argue that the APG’s refusal of political party and class affiliations was representative of a complete disavowal of their contemporary political options; a political position that for artistic practice meant foregoing class and political loyalties in favor of focusing on art’s relationship to ideology itself. Exploring themes of class, labor, time and the political potential of a work of art, I argue for the broader importance of the APG within histories of art and interdisciplinary practice, and propose an alternative perspective of the relationship between art and politics during the 1960s and 70s.

Text

2024-04-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74316

Art History

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/