British Art of the Long 1980s

Through twenty-three thoughtful interviews, Imogen Racz's book surveys the legacies, wit, and energy of British art in the 1980s. The reflections of artists and producers narrate how this decade formed new networks and, importantly, how artists started to democratise art in Britain. --Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director, Holt/Smithson Foundation, USA This immensely readable collection of interviews sheds light on an overlooked decade. Racz's warm yet incisive questioning elicits enlightening responses, from astute analyses of individual practices to contextual reflections. A vibrant scene emerges, one fuelled by the actions of a wider network of protagonists than is often acknowledged. --Natalie Rudd, Senior Curator, Arts Council Collection, UK This fascinating and important book re-examines and reframes the narrative of British sculpture in the 1980s, a decade that saw seismic changes as British artists began to be internationally recognised and exhibited. Racz's interviewees include many of the leading artists, curators and facilitators of the time and their testimony is a vivid record of what it was like to live and work as an artist and of how this changed in the course of the decade and beyond. The difficulties faced by women artists, not only as a result of prejudice but also owing to complex debates about the representation of the female body, come through strongly. The book is particularly engaging when artists speak about their working methods, the sources of their ideas and the experience of making. For all the financial and other limitations of the decade, the reader has the impression that this was a time of freedom, the burgeoning of ideas and a joy in making. The book is essential reading for scholars of this period of art history and will also appeal to anyone interested in the development of art practice in the UK. --Patricia Townsend, artist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author of Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist's Process (2019) Imogen Racz's timely and important account of British Art of the Long 1980s unsettles easy narratives of an era recent enough to be part of living memory but long enough ago to enable reflective contemplation. Caught at a moment when the memory of this era threatens to disappear (two of her interviewees are no longer with us), Racz's book is crafted around a series of vivid, enthralling and sometimes surprisingly candid interviews. By slightly lengthening the timespan and, most revealingly, talking to practitioners, curators, dealers and facilitators who were enmeshed in this history, Racz's account allows a subtle realignment of the usual co-ordinates. Rather than explode the myths of New British Sculpture or the YBAs , she reveals underlying connections in the networks of the time and repositions sculpture and object-based practices allowing a more complexly connected history to be revealed. --Joy Sleeman, Professor of Art History and Theory, UCL Slade School of Fine Art, UK