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Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, United States of America
Official website: Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Walker Art Center was the originating venue for Brilliant!: New Art From London, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, 22 October 1995  - 7 January 1996 and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 17 February - 14 April 1996. The exhibition was one of a number that featured practitioners identified with the so-called yBa grouping. The term yBa refers to certain types of practitioners who collectively, and in some instances, rather loosely, came to be known as Young British Artists, or yBas for short. The term originated in the early 1990s, centred on the work of Damien Hirst and a number of other artists. In an essay The Tate, The Turner Prize and the Art World, Louisa Buck offered a useful summary of the term’s origins. “[Charles] Saatchi had attended [Damien] Hirst’s famous Freeze exhibition in 1988, and soon began to bulk-buy this new batch of home-grown talent. He also set about applying his marketing skills to the promotion of these artists and their work, initially in a series of widely publicised exhibitions at Boundary Road [the original home of the Saatchi Gallery, in St John’s Wood, London] during 1992-5 under the collective title of Young British Artists. The acronym stuck, and soon any artist of that generation, whether or not they had been to Goldsmiths [College], was branded YBA.” Louisa Buck, The Tate, the Turner Prize and the Art World, in The Turner Prize and British Art, Tate, 2007, pp. 12 – 25 (p.19). Chris Ofili was the only Black artist included in Brilliant!: New Art From London. This was at a time when Ofili’s distinctive use of elephant dung within his work was very much in its ascendancy and his Turner Prize nomination was still several years off.

Walker Art Center was also the venue for No Place (Like Home), March 9 - June 8 1997. The exhibition was curated by Richard Flood, Curatorial Assistant, Deepali Dewan, and Curatorial Intern, Eungie Joo. The artists in the exhibition were Zarina Bhimji, Nick Deocampo, Willie Doherty, Kay Hassan, Kcho, Gary Simmons, Meyer Vaisman, and Kara Walker.

Related items

click to show details of Brilliant! New Art From London

»  Brilliant! New Art From London

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1995

click to show details of Interrogating Identity - catalogue

»  Interrogating Identity - catalogue

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1991

click to show details of Interrogating Identity - New York Times review

»  Interrogating Identity - New York Times review

Review relating to an exhibition, 1991

click to show details of ‘Interrogating Identity’: The View from ‘outside’

»  ‘Interrogating Identity’: The View from ‘outside’

Article relating to an exhibition, 1991

click to show details of No Place (Like Home) catalogue

»  No Place (Like Home) catalogue

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1997

Exhibitions at this venue

People who have appeared at this venue + view all 46

»  Glenn Ligon

Born, 1960 in New York

»  Lani Maestro

Born, 1957 in Philippines

»  Ingrid Pollard

Born, 1953 in Georgetown, Guyana

»  Donald Rodney

Born, 1961 in Birmingham, England. Died, 1998

»  Gary Simmons

Born, 1964 in New York, New York, USA